Ink & Penstemon

An open reply to Diana of Elephant’s Eye Garden’s comment from my Paperwhite’s post in which she asks about my impressions of using Tumblr—

Just to start, Diana, off topic is fine. And, just to point out a feature of Tumblr, if you do ever want to just ask a question or start an off topic conversation, Tumblr provides an Ask Me Anything page, which I would love to see get more traffic. So ask away!

I like the tumbleblog concept. I like it quite a bit. (For those who don’t know what a tumble blog is, here is a link from Diana’s query that sums it up.) I like the abbreviated format; I don’t feel compelled to write an article for every post. It’s nice to be able to put out just a single image, or quote, or video. I postulate that in five years, most new blogs will be tumble blogs and Tumblr is doing an excellent job of carving out this niche. Mind you, you don’t have to have a strict tumble blog to be on Tumblr; it supports old school blogging just fine, as evidenced by this post. In fact, you could treat your current blog just like a tumble blog, you just wouldn’t have Tumblr’s network and features to drawn upon.

Tumblr is also very pretty and there are many, many “themes” to choose from, each with different features that cater to various blog formats. If you are accustomed to the plug-and-play nature of widgets and such that’s built into other blog publishers, you may be somewhat frustrated. Tumblr is a darling of web designers, so they cater to those who know their way around CSS, not so much to your average blogger who probably isn’t even sure what a CSS is. I’m somewhere in between, and I’ve been able to manage.

My main complaint about Tumblr is what most consider an asset: the “reblog.” Reblogging allows you to republish someone else’s Tumblr post in its entirety on your blog. Sure, they give you credit and a link back, but it creates something of a culture of parasite blogging. It’s part and parcel to the new “share and share alike” culture of the internet. (I’m sure the folks at Cook’s Source would have loved having a blog on Tumblr.) I’ve only ever been reblogged once or twice, so I don’t consider it to be an issue of any consequence. If I had a popular blog that could earn me a book deal, this loss of traffic might be a concern. 

Also, you should be aware that Tumblr offers no support to import blogs from other publishers so kiss your Wordpress/Blogger/Typepad world goodbye. You can’t take it with you. Your old posts will stay put. Your “friends” lists will be gone.  Despite leaving a link to your new location, expect a drop in readers for awhile. Tumblr does has its own community directory, though the gardening community isn’t very large. If you really miss your old peeps, Google Friends can be set up on Tumblr, albeit it’s a bit redundant. You will have to rely more upon networks like Twitter, Facebook, and Blotanical to attract readers.

So, obviously this isn’t for everyone. If you are attracted to the tumble blog format, but don’t want to bother with the clean start, you may want to try it in addition to your regular blog. Still, I’ve enjoyed the move. If you do start a tumble blog, just be sure to let me know so I can follow it.

Originally, I posted this in the comment section of my last post on Bindweed, in which I stated that I was a bit spooked to use pesticides like glyphosates like Round-up and others, so I try to garden organically. Ginkgograss questioned me on this, and after posting a too-lengthy reply in comments, I found that it probably merited its own post.

Pesticides are taboo for me. I’m not saying using pesticides is a moral question and that you are a bad person if you use them. And I try not to be preachy against those who choose to use them. I do use some rarely, and with extreme caution, protecting myself with long-sleeved shirt, goggles, mask, and nitrile gloves.

And yet, I watched my mother in law battle with a rare non-hereditary form of cancer for years and endure an early and painful death. She didn’t smoke or drink and had fairly healthy eating habits, but she did grow up and live for almost her whole life in food and cotton agriculture country where pesticides were and still are applied heavily. In addition to living in an already potentially toxic environment, for many years, she used Round-up to control weeds encroaching on her backyard from a neighboring field. Now, no, we don’t know for sure if the pesticides were the cause, but I know she certainly thought they were, especially the Round-up. As she reasoned, she was the one who applied it and then she had ended up with cancer while no one else in her family did. I’m pretty sure if she could go back, she would have done something else to those weeds in the back, even if it meant pulling them out by hand. What was a few hours weeding compared to the years of her life now taken away?

Again, I can’t prove pesticides like Round-up gave my mother-in-law cancer. I suspect that it was a combination of exposures to different substances, but who knows? I just remember thinking how awful it must be to believe that you yourself had caused your cancer by doing something you could have easily avoided. So, I’d rather take the safe route and not use things like Round-up if I can.

I realize that this is a pretty heavy-handed answer to Ginkgograss’s comment, and I apologize for that. I don’t want to make anyone reading or commenting on the blog feel badly for using pesticides, but please be careful if you do and if you can, only use them as a last resort. Again, what’s a few hours of weeding to an untroubled mind?

Is it just me, or does there seem to be an awful lot of gardeners named Susan? It first came to my attention when I came upon a garden blogroll somewhere and there were a lot of Susans on it. 

This is odd, because growing up I almost never ran into Susans. I was it—Susan en seul. I bumped into other Susans occasionally when I moved around after college, but when I finally settled here, they began crawling out of the woodwork. In fact, there was an eerie, yet short-lived period in the neighborhood where each woman that moved in was named Susan.

But now that I’m more involved in the online gardening world, I run into them regularly. Susan Harris at Garden Rant is probably the most well-known Susan. Her blog had a post on landscape designer Susan Cohan. And, I’ve just discovered Susan Ranner of the eponymous Susan’s Garden.

Are women named Susan destined to become gardeners? Do I have a gardening doppelganger named Susan out there somewhere, who’s also wearing a pink hat? 

I’m curious as to how many of us gardening Susans there are. If you are a Susan or know of a gardening Susan, please make note of it in the comments. Consider it a gardening-Susan census. We’ll see if I’m just paranoid or narcissistic or both.