I've been noodling around looking for the next five websites to feature in the Take Five spot and the more I look the more it confirms that blog-rolls in general must be updated frequently or they are barely worth the space they take up. If I visit a blog, I not only read the words and look at the pictures but I also like to click on links to see what other interests the writer might have. I did this today and found blogs which linked to other blogs which haven't been updated since TWO THOUSAND AND SIX!
I've also discovered an intense dislike for the blogging templates which offer a single photo accompanied by a few lines of text which is then followed by a "read more" instruction. I don't want to click to read more. I want to read the entire blog post right there on the page.
Anyway I digress. I do indeed have have new websites for you, click through to the blog if you are reading this as an email and want to get the links.
Garden Birdwatch is the project run by the British Trust for Ornithology. To me, the RSPB get all the money and the BTO do all the work. I am planning to start the Garden Birdwatch as soon as my membership has been activated. Indeed, we have made a start over at Fegrig Airport.
Next, I will show you my geeky side. The Urban Explorer group takes photos of discarded and derelict buildings in the UK. Hospitals, Lido, Cinemas and other public places. Looking at the pictures I wonder if they couldn't be rescued and turned into something useful before they decline into complete collapse and have to be demolished for safety reasons.
Similarly the flickr group called Old Abandoned Buildings records mainly domestic architecture, houses, farms, and schools of the kind Laura Ingalls Wilder probably attended. There is a similar flickr group called Once Was Home if your geekyness takes the same direction as mine.
My Tiny Plot is an excellent UK gardening blog, updated regularly and with wonderful photos (the train set is just a diversion). Have a look at the garden plans for the last few years too. You can subscribe by email, just as you can to this blog. As an observation I have found that gardening blogs are very much in the abandoned-several-years-ago category, maybe because the bloggers are now gardening instead?
Skippy's Vegetable Garden is an American blog this time, about a garden in Boston, which seems to have had a similarly snowy Christmas to ourselves. I love the succession of photos in the sidebar showing the garden through the years and the seasons (scroll right down to below the books and the blog archive).
I hope you like these offerings. If anyone knows of good gardening blogs please let me know. YouGrowGirl is one which everyone raves about, the photography is good but it does that horrible click here to "Read More" thing which annoys the cabbages out of me, so it didn't make the list.
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PS There may be a comment competition soon.
