Honest Scrap Award

I was at a jobsite this morning when my phone beeped. A Twitter direct message had come in to me from Dan Eskelson, a fellow landscape designer and blogger from N. Idaho, that he’d tagged me for the Honest Scrap award. I’ve only been blogging for 3 months or so, so I was very excited. However, not knowing what this prestigious award entailed, I called my sister Laura at work to google it (now you know I don’t have an iPhone or Blackberry). After several frustrating minutes, she said, “I can’t find anything about any Honest Crap award!” Sigh.

After returning home and doing my own investigating, I came to the conclusion that a) my blog had NOT been nominated for anything. Dammit. but b) my sparkling online personality had lead Dan to out me to the world and that c) I am to list 10 honest things about myself that nobody knows and then tag 7 other bloggers to do the same. Well, I love games, so here goes:

1. I never intended to be a landscaper. I went to school to be a therapist. Deciding I needed more therapy than I could possibly ever give, I opted to go with my passion of gardening instead.
2. I love succulents! They’re my favorite plants. The textures, other- worldly flowers, prehistoric forms–they’re the grooviest plants ever!
3. It makes me crazy when I see water waste. Businesses irrigating in the rain, a broken pipe that nobody tends to, people not bothering to check their irrigation systems for efficiency, lawns that are too big. Don’t get me started. Oh, wait, Dan already did!
4. I hate for things to match. Things don’t have to match, they have to “go.” I don’t like matching furniture, accessories, plates, you name it. I was at my client Barb’s the other day when I went inside her house and had to take my rubber rain boots off. My socks didn’t even match. But they covered my feet and kept me warm so I didn’t care.
5. I was once an extra in a Jackie Chan movie, The Big Brawl. I’m not even kidding. My high school marching band and football team were hired to be extras in the crowd scenes. Go check it out; I’m  in a roller-derby scene, the girl who was pulled out of the way of the roller derby-ers. Why there was a roller derby scene in a martial arts movie, I’m not quite sure. It quite possibly underscores how perfectly dreadful this movie was, so much so that the first, oh, 6 times I saw it, I fell asleep.
6. I garden on a balcony in North Austin, and I’ve got a larger balcony than most. It overlooks I-35 so it’s loud, but it’s been the scene of many cocktail-and-cigar gatherings because of its grooviness.
7. I love avocados, gin and tonics, rainy days, the Sunday morning paper and the smell of cut grass. I love sleeping in sometimes, Texas blues, chick flicks, laughing my head off and tasteless jokes. And I really love making clients happy, scary movies and my teenage boys. OK, that was about 21 things in one, but this is my one Honest Scrap moment, so a girl has to take advantage.
8. My boys have turned me on to ska and rap. No, really. Check out Streetlight Manifesto and Atmosphere.
9. I love the work of Roberto Burle Marx. Talk about utterly inspiring and inspired. Incredible.
10. If I couldn’t be a landscaper designer, I’d work in a fine arts gallery. Although my son Max told me that what I just wrote constitutes a logical fallacy. To be specific, “hypothesis contrary to fact.” So, apparently, if I couldn’t be a landscape designer, I couldn’t teach English, either.

Now, here’s my list of  7 bloggers that I am tagging for this distinction:

Julie Gomoll

Fern Richardson

Pam Penick

Lynn Felici-Gallant

Naomi Sachs

Laura Schaub

Mike Lieberman

An Honorable Mention goes to Annies Annuals, but alas I could not tag them on account of nobody seems to be Annie over there, and plus, they don’t blog. But they are honest and scrappy, so they should get a shout out! So there you have it–happy reading and happy blogging!

Tagged as: award, blog, Honest Scrap Award