Liebster Blog Award

The Sage Butterfly has kindly nominated me for the "Liebster Blog" award. I have only been blogging for one week and am very grateful to her for the kind recognition! It is very encouraging to me as a new blogger. "Liebster Blog" means favorite blog in German. Here is a wild rose of thanks for Sage Butterfly:

Rosa pimpinellifolia altaica

The Sage Butterfly's blog of the same name contains many inspiring reflections on nature, and truly beautiful photography. I'm sure many of you know it already, but if you do not you should definitely pay a visit. I've enjoyed many of the posts there - to choose just one, Autumn Amble shows some lovely fall scenes with reflections on the word "ephemeral."

The rules in accepting the Liebster Blog award are:

1. Copy and paste the Liebster Blog award on your blog.
2. Thank the bestower and link back to them.
3. Select five blogs with less than 200 followers and list them with a link to their blogs. Visit their blog and write a comment telling them you have nominated them for the Liebster Blog award.

Here are five blogs that I really enjoy reading (I'm not always sure how many followers a blog has, so sorry if some these are already too popular to qualify):

1. Talking to Plants - a blog from a gardener in Central Wisconsin, about vegetable and ornamental gardening. I especially enjoyed this post about a trip to the Chicago Botanic Garden - beautiful roses there!
2. Nadezda's Northern Garden - a gardener from near St. Petersburg, Russia shares her northern garden with the world. One of my favorite posts was about the installation of a lovely pond in her garden.
3. Garden Head - this Pennsylvania blogger has a condition she calls "Garden Head" - gardening on the brain. I think we can all relate to that! She gardens organically, is friendly to frogs, and grows a variety of perennials, annuals, and vegetables. You can see some of her nice ligularia in this post.
4. Ernie and I: Adventures in a Sussex Garden - this blogger showcases his wonderful garden in Sussex, England. I really enjoyed this recent post about a visit to Rosemoor.
5. Japanese Garden - this gardener has amazingly neat and productive square-foot vegetable gardens near his home and office in Japan. He grows fava beans, which is enough to put someone on my favorites list right there. This post entitled Yoga, Fragrant Flowers, and Squirrels has some beautiful shots from a trip to India.

Thank you, happy valentine's day, and happy gardening to everyone.

-Rebecca (spurge)