Entries from April 2007 ↓

Is this your first visit to the Garden? The Gardener invites you to subscribe to the RSS feed. Thanks for visiting! We hope you come back to the Garden soon!

A while back, in response to a post on Beta Blogger 4 Dummies, we removed the “no follow” attribute from our html code to allow search spiders to find comments posted here.

The “do follow” movement has picked up steam in a major way. Randa Clay created the attractive button in our left sidebar. You can download it, too, and add it to your site.

Here are the instructions for participating in the “I Follow” movement:
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The idea of reciprocal favorites listings apparently originated with Dosh Dosh but is fast picking up speed. Dosh Dosh requests a link back to his original post in which he said:

The only reason why I am asking for a link to this post here is because I want this to be an interactive experiment where all of us can increase our Technorati favorites, not just Dosh Dosh alone.By linking here, you’ll send your readers to participate in this experiment and when I link back to you, the readers of Dosh Dosh can visit your blog to trade favorites with you as well.

This is a targeted two-way arrangement and allows us to share traffic and readers with each other.

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“Every moment is a moment to learn something,” the Blue Panther said in his very first post on October 5, 2005. And ever since then, he has been striving for greater awareness and knowledge about the world around him, his fellow human beings and himself. “What’s important is for the strong to recognize their strength and help the weak instead of feeding on the weak and getting stronger.”

So why the Blue Panther? You can read a charming recollection that explains much about his outlook on life here. Therein, he says, “. . . Blue Panther, as a name, is a favorite of mine and for reasons that I can’t explain, whenever I have started anything I have tried to somehow manage to put a Blue Panther in that name. So when it was time to have a blog, why would it be any different, thus my blog is called The Blue Panther Experience.”

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We can sum up why we initially decided to spotlight Giardino del Piacere in one word: Gratitude. You will find it in abundance there . . . and Ceeci is spearheading the campaign to spread it throughout the blogosphere.

Called “Gratitude Tuesday,” Ceeci decided to “break my gratitudes down alphabetically and keep them to just one letter per week. Having a shorter list would allow me the freedom to explain as much or as little as I wish.” To encourage others to join her in this blogging adventure, she created the attractive button show here. The rules are

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Well, spring is here . . . the garden is in full bloom! Are you enjoying all of the colors of the different varieties of flowers?

In some parts of the country, folks are definitely not enjoying spring-like weather. In fact, it was 25 degrees below normal today in New York!

Of course, spring means cleaning and we have been doing a lot of that here in the garden . . . pulling weeds, tidying up. Got the benches all cleaned up and ready for you to sit down for a few moments, relax, enjoy a cool beverage, and visit the many blogs we will be spotlighting here in the coming days as spring stretches into the long, lazy days of summer.

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Sometimes you happen upon a blog that you just can’t tear yourself away from and, before you know it, you’re deep into the archives absorbing every word.

So it was when we visited Matters of the Heart. The author, Sandy T., writes from her heart about her struggles with depression and anxiety, relationship with an addict which ended not too long ago, and search for inner peace.¹

She talks about the depth of love she feels for her young son and other special folks in her life, and candidly shares details about her relationships with them. She admits that her choices do not always bring approval from her family members but is blessed by being surrounded by supportive, loving family and friends, and expresses her gratitude regularly.

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1. ”And now that we are done and over with, it’s time for me to do some soul searching. I have to find myself, get right with myself and take the time to learn who I am and what I’m all about. I need to start living my life and not someone else’s.”

The idea originated at Points of Light where James Jordan decided to give away virtual flowers in honor of the spring equinox. The instructions provided by James were really simple: “Instruct your blog readers to click your “Think Spring” picture to get their own HTML code and keep the virtual flower-giving going. Let’s see how far we can spread this “spirit of spring” meme!” Obviously, that’s an idea we can get behind!But then Squidoo took it a step further with these directions:1. Write a spring related entry in your blog
2. Find 3 other spring related posts in 3 other blogs
3. Add the “Think Spring!” picture and code to your blog
4. Leave a comment with a link to your post at rosewomanSo now the Gardener is off to find three blogs featuring posts about spring to share with you!

The conceptualization of this blog was serendipity. It all came together at once: The quotation and its underlying meaning, the graphics, the concept.

A few hours later . . . voila! Here you are reading the very first post welcoming you to join us in this new adventure.

What is this blog all about? If you spend some time surfing the infinite variety of blog directories, hub, rings, review sites . . . you may conclude that yet another site is not needed.

We disagree.

This is why we are here:

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