Saturday, May 19, 2012

Garden Bloggers Fling and a Book Giveaway

It’s that time of year again, time to fling. Garden Bloggers Fling that is. This year we are heading to Asheville, North Carolina. The home of the Biltmore House, surrounded by National Forests, and filled with a bunch of cool funky stuff.

My first Fling was in Buffalo, NY. I had only been blogging for a couple of months and really had no idea what I was getting into. Who knew bloggers were such a fun and friendly group of people to hang out with? We were treated like royalty by the local press and all of a sudden a ton of people were reading my brand new baby blog. Here are my posts from that Fling, it was called Buffa10.

Last year we flung up to Seattle. Where us southern bloggers had a respite from the heat. I saw some familiar faces from Buffalo along with a lot of new garden bloggers joining us. Our time in Seattle was jam-pack with garden goodness. Check it out.

image002 One of the Seattle Fling organizers, Lorene Edwards Forkner released a book last year called Handmade Garden Projects. You can see some great examples of her projects on many of last years blog posts: Houston Garden Girl, Commonweeder, Bonney Lassie, and Rock Rose.

Here’s a few more pictures from her backyard to wet your appetite.

 

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Timber Press is having a promotion right now and has provided me with one copy of Lorene’s book to give away. Leave a comment by May 26th to enter the drawing to receive a free copy.

As you can see, many talented garden bloggers are involved every year in Flinging. Keep up with all of us and our travels around Asheville by visiting the Fling blog.

May Garden Bloggers Bloom Day

I have been out of town for the last week or so, back in Oman for another stage of the project I've been working on for my company. I was pleasantly surprised by the gardens when I arrived back home on Wednesday afternoon. The rain we received while I was gone really set everything into motion.

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I bought this little one on clearance at Lowes. It's doing well so far this year with some shade from an oak tree.

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Perennial Pentas, definitely better than the annuals
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Practically everything is in bloom
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The group of crinums in the foreground aren't blooming, but the two in the background are.
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Belinda's Dream with Nature's Way compost as a topdressing that I spread before I left on my trip
 
I’m in Asheville now for the 2012 Garden Bloggers Fling. Stay tuned, more pictures to come.

And a big thanks for Carol at May Dreams Gardens for hosting garden bloggers bloom day.