A while or so back, two kind blogging friends nominated me for the Versatile Blogger award – independently, bless them, which felt like the honour it is. The deal with awards like this is that you’re supposed to pass on the favour – it’s a way of giving others an “attaboy/girl”, and at the same time highlighting some blogs that you enjoy that others might not yet have found.
The thing is, I’m not in a super bloggy sort of mood these days, and so the rules of the award made it seem too daunting to bother with. So I didn’t. But now I’ve decided that in the interest of tying up loose ends before the end of the year, I should really share some blogs/sites that I find interesting. Nothing like leaving it to the last minute. At least one of my regular readers is already in 2014, thanks to being in Japan!
So, the two bloggers who nominated me, and whose blogs are delightful, well written and diverse in subject matter, are: Dark Creek Farm and Wuppenif. Go check them out. And thank you so much, ladies; your creativity and energy inspire me.
I haven’t gone back to the nomination posts to see what I’m supposed to do next, but it’s probably something like tell you 7 interesting things you might not already know about me. I don’t feel terribly interesting these days, but here’s a few:
– I work in a library. I love my job. And you should know that public libraries are not “shush” zones anymore. They are noisy, bright, chattery places, a place to connect with your community, and yes, a place to borrow books, movies, music and downloadables.
– I grew up speaking with an English accent even though I was born and raised in Canada. For all of my childhood and early adulthood, I was “bilingual” in that I used “English” with my family, and “Canadian” with everyone else. My brother, six years younger, just spoke Canadian, though he says my name in English even now. I don’t speak “English” anymore, as our grandparents and parents are all gone now.
– I became horse mad at the young age of 5 (I lived in a city at the time). I started riding lessons when I was 8 (almost the minute we moved to the farm), got a pony for Christmas (tied under the apple tree outside, in the snow – yes, it was an amazing Christmas) when I was 9, fell off said pony a week later and spent a few days recovering from concussion in hospital, and a month off school convalescing. Didn’t get back on that pony till June, but rode her and two subsequent ponies/horses daily from then till university. And have barely ridden since.
– I went to boarding school at age 15. There were good and bad things about those 3 years, but suffice to say, I would not consider private school for our own daughters, even if we could have afforded it.
-I have a BA in Anthropology. I have never had occasion to use it, except on my resume. And I suppose you could say the study of mankind was handy in surviving a very male dominated work environment in the Navy. Kidding.
– I threw up in Paradise. Really. Digby scallops disagreed with me, and Paradise is a tiny hamlet just up the road from Digby, Nova Scotia. I upchucked behind the church. I think I was 20.
– I asked for the Cat Stevens version of “Morning Has Broken” to be played at our wedding. Still my all time favourite. Maybe I’ll ask for it to be played at my funeral. I can still play it on the piano (more or less), having first learned it in when I was a teenager. A long time ago.
The other half of this award is to share some interesting blogs with you. These are mostly not on my blogroll, and different from the list of blogs I shared last year for another award. I don’t visit all of these regularly, but when the mood strikes. These span food, farming, permaculture, TEOWAWKI, child raising and more. I like them for different reasons – sometimes the writing style, sometimes the photography, sometimes the subject matter. In no particular order then:
Ben Hewitt
Contrary Farmer
Owd Fred (Countryman)
Deliberate Agrarian
Le Petit Canard Farm
Surviving the Suburbs
Casaubon’s Book
Essex Farm
Sugar Mountain Farm
Milkwood
Taranaki Farm
All the best for 2014 to everyone.