Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Sites of Interest

I haven't done one of these posts in a really long time, which makes me feel guilty. I occasionally mean to, but then I think, well, maybe I should wait a few months to see if they're going to keep blogging, 'cause I don't want to be sending people to a dead blog, plus it's a lot of reading for me to do if I'm going to try to figure out what the typical topics are, so I procrastinate, and then I never wind up doing it, because those things never actually stop being problems. I could stand to be more organized about the blog referrals, I guess is what I'm saying.

Anyway. Here we go.

Farmscape Gardens
Writer(s): Daniel Allen, Jesse DuBois, Julia Hejl, Sean Williams.
Location: Claremont, CA and vicinity.
Main topics of interest: Urban food gardening / edible landscaping, food politics, recipes, environment.
I found the blog via: e-mail from Sean.

Plantgasm
Writer(s): Derek Powazek.
Location: San Francisco, CA.
Main topics of interest: Houseplants (succulent and tropical), photography, vertical gardening, botany, some outdoor gardening, container gardening.
I found the blog via: StatCounter, following a post at Plantgasm in which PATSP was mentioned, followed closely by an e-mail.

Garden Adventures
Writer(s): Grower Jim.
Location: Central Florida (zone 9B).
Main topics of interest: Outdoor gardening generally, edible tropicals, bromeliads, photography. Also sells a few plants and seeds through PayPal.
I found the blog via: PATSP comments, probably, though Blotanical is also possible. I don't remember.

Bug Girl's Blog
Writer(s): Bug Girl, duh.
Location: "A University in the Midwest."
Main topics of interest: Academia, a wide assortment of insects and other arthropods, feminism, skepticism, the environment, occasionally gardening.
I found the blog via: BoingBoing.net did a post about a picture of "aphids," which got their commenters all riled up because they're not aphids OMG, which resulted in a brief but spirited taxonomy argument about whether or not springtails are insects. Commenter #9 linked to this page at myrmecos.net, which attempts to quantify the stupidity of mistaking one organism for another, and which included a link to Bug Girl's Blog about snopes.com insisting in a post about cochineal that scale insects are beetles even though they're obviously not beetles. Except that Snopes has apparently changed this since the Bug Girl's Blog post in question was written. I don't normally provide this much detail in how I happen upon interesting websites (and aren't you grateful?), but in this case I remember it really well because it was yesterday afternoon.

A Digital Botanical Garden
Writer(s): Phil Gates.
Location: County Durham, UK.
Main topics of interest: Botany, photography, plant-related trivia. Posts focus on a single species at a time but may be about almost any plant. Has another blog devoted to microscopy, some of which is botanically-oriented and frequently very cool.
I found the blog via: I have no idea. I suspect Google.

Floradora
Writer(s): Kelly Kilpatrick.
Location: Oakland, CA.
Main topics of interest: Garden design, photography.
I found the blog via: no idea.

Dyckia Brazil
Writer(s): Constantino.
Location: Santa Catarina, Brazil.
Main topics of interest: Dyckias, photos of Dyckias, thoughts about Dyckias, Dyckia-related botany and taxonomy. Also there are sometimes Dyckias.
I found the blog via: I don't actually remember, but it seems like a fairly safe bet that I found it by Googling "Dyckia" at some point.

Plant Chaser
Writer(s): Bom.
Location: Philippines.
Main topics of interest: Public garden displays, photography, tropical outdoor gardening, Tillandsias, cycads.
I found the blog via: comments left on PATSP, I'm pretty sure.


10 comments:

Hermes said...

Great update - really interesting.

Paul said...

Just to beat a dead horse, springtails are NOT Insecta. That is all.

Tigerdawn said...

LOL- Paul!

Ginny Burton said...

Speaking of dead blogs, FUPenguin hasn't had a new post in well over a year.

mr_subjunctive said...

Ginny Burton:

I know. I keep hoping, though I should probably take it off the list.

Derek said...

Thanks for the shout!

grumblebunny said...

Ooooh. Plantgasm is swanky, from his fab selection of plants to the ur-cool containers in which he houses them. Ditto Floradora. Good advice offered, too. Always inspirational and/or aspirational reading (take your pick).

In other news, I will never stop mourning the passage of FUPenguin. Never.

Pat said...

Some of those are very interesting, thanks.

Steve Asbell said...

Great blogs, including some of my favorites.

Grower Jim said...

Thank you so much for including my blog on your list! So far 30 people have clicked on the link.