How "Sweet"! Honest Scrap Award

Rebecca Sweet at Gossip in the Garden has nominated me for an Honest Scrap Award.  Not sure where the name comes from, but basically it's where you list 10 things about yourself that y'all probably don't know already.  Then, 7 of my favorite bloggers are selected to continue the legacy.  I've never been very good at following Fleetwood Mac's advice (never break the chain), so I think I'd prefer to see this as a great way to share some of my favorite planty blogs.  But first, the confessions!

1.  I squish slugs with my bare hands.  It's kind of gross, but when you're already covered with dirt it really doesn't matter.

 

2.  Despite the fact that I attended fancy-pants art school, we ended up having to get a colorist to help us pick paint for our house.  It's embarrassing, but it really worked out.  If anyone has a purpose for quarts of some wierd colors I bought pre-colorist, I'm your girl!

3.  When I'm working in the garden, I usually like to listen to the sounds going on around me, but at home I'll compulsively listen to NPR.  It's dorky, but I always look forward to Fresh Air and Political Junky on Talk of the Nation. 

 

image found on Slate.com

4.  I'm so totally addicted to watching Mad Men!  We don't have cable, so we depend on watching the episodes when they come out on DVD.  I was so crushed when we got to the last episode of season 2!

5.  It's an off day if I don't have at least 2 cups of tea.  Wintertime lends itself to black teas, like Earl Gray, but I'm having cravings lately for some Lapsang Souchong, or smoked tea.  It's intense and the only tea I take with cream.

6.  I have a weakness for ribbon.  There's a full drawer of it in my office, but I can't bring myself to use most of it, since it's so pretty!

7.  Our bathroom is pink and green.  When we first moved in, we would check our friends' reactions upon being confronted by the colors.  Aaaaah!  Honestly, though?  It sold me.

8.  Every year, some friends and I get together and make Valentine's Day cards.  It's one of my favorite holidays because sometimes you need an excuse to peel glue off of your fingertips and play with glitter!

9.  I'm so horrible to my tools!  I have a very dirt-encrusted hori-hori right now, developing a thin layer of rust.  The Felcos are hanging in there, but the pruning saw needs a new blade.  Sigh.

10.  The reason I focus on California natives?  Part of it is pragmatic, but a good chunk of it is because I have a hard time narrowing things down.  The native plant palette keeps me in check because there's so many amazing plants out there! 

And here's a list of blogs I never fail to check in on:

Town Mouse & Country Mouse:  a perfect yin-yang of native plant research and exploration
Curbstone Valley Farm:  Clare has a way of making even slime molds look like the most beautiful thing in the world.
Cactus Jungle's Cactus Blog:  a lovely nursery, a great blog for everything cactus, served with a side of  mild snark.
Paradis Express:  a world of wonder.  If my mouth isn't hanging open in amazement, I'm usually drooling.
Garden Porn:  the Queen of high-end landscape design.
An Alameda Garden:  the tagline says it all:  Where the soil is sandy and the digging is easy.
Rooted in California:   gorgeous photography from a native nut with an envy-producing green thumb
Bay Area Tendrils Garden Travel:  more drool-inducing gorgeousness.  Alice's prose makes for a lyrical journey through gardens around the world.