Anyone who's read the Selfish Gene may already be familiar with the word "meme" - Richard Dawkins invented it to describe a piece of cultural behaviour which evolves by principles of selection, just like a biological entity would do.
Garden bloggers benefit from a range of virally-awarded prizes, which often get called "memes" (I'd love to know who first applied the term to blogging). The good news for me is that Veg Plotting just awarded me one called Arte y Pico. (I explained this pyramid-like scheme to my boyfriend, who just said, "Does this mean you are going to get £32,000 within 14 days?". I think probably not, honey.)
If you know anything about viral blog prizes, you know I first have to mention the blog who invented the prize to begin with. Arte y Pico is a knitting blog in Spanish, so I can't tell you that much about it. But I love the viral journey the prize must have travelled to come all the way to me - awarded from darkest Chippenham.
Now in order to carry on the Dawkinsian movement across the web, I have to tell you the following five rules:
1. Choose 5 blogs you consider deserving of this award for their creativity, design, interesting material, and contribution to the blogging community, regardless of the language.
2. Each award should have the name of the author and a link to his/her blog to be visited by everyone.
3. Each award winner should show the award and put the name and link to the blog that presented him/her with the award.
4. The award winner and the one who has given the award should show the Arte y Pico blog so everyone will know the origin of this award. Translated, it means "the peak of art".
Finally, here are my picks of five blogs to watch. I chose:
Typing on the Void:
Pete Free's blog is a totally delightful diary of a hard-working National Trust nursery supervisor who also manages to spend their free time chasing up as many four-star gardens as possible with cream teas in between. Pete constantly makes me want to go and visit more gardens. So the blog's a shoo-in.
Happy Mouffetard
has a very long-running blog which juxtaposes gorgeous macro shots of beautiful flowers with recipes and an irresistible sense of humour about fern fronds. Delightful.
Can't believe nobody's awarded We're Going to Need a Bigger Pot
a huge medal for her hilarious quest to reconstruct a Mesozoic garden
in suburban West London. This is the kind of thing great Radio 4
programmes are made from!
Likewise with Plants are the Strangest People. I love euphorbias, that's enough for Mr Subjunctive and I to bond over, but his tales of working in an anonymous Iowa nursery are always enlightening and often hilarious.
Finally, the horticultural blog that cheers me up almost every day, despite having slightly more love for Chris Beardshaw than I can ever condone. It may not have much "art" in the old-fashioned Rembrandt sense, but according to a more modern Tracey Emin-style standard, it
has plenty. Check out Arabella Sock and her marvellous Gif-tastic entertainments - just remember not to take it all too seriously...
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