How Now Brown Cow Meets Piet Oudolf

That's right, it's time for an elocution lesson. As a garden connoisseur you are bound to have heard of  Dutch garden designer Piet Oudolf but if you are non Dutch speaking do you also know how to pronounce his name correctly?

When I talk with non Dutch garden geeks who are raving about Mr Oudolf I often have to ask them to repeat that name as it's mostly so badly mispronounced as to leave me clueless of whom they are talking about.

Joe Swift from Gardener's World is a prime example of how not to garble Piet's name. Last year in June he presented a GW programme about Prairie Gardens where he mentioned a well known designer by the name of &^$# gobble (**&^ dy *&#@ gook. What? I am Dutch and have heard his name mangled in unbelievable ways before but this was really bad to the power of über cheese.

So here goes, please pay attention and that goes for you in the back as well:

Piet is difficult to pronounce when your native tongue is English, I readily admit it, but lets have a go at it anyway: Piet is pronounced as ....... Pete.  Sorted!

Oudolf is slightly more difficult but I think you will be able to pull it off if you put your back into it.

Oudolf has 2 syllables: Ou - dolf

First syllable  sounds exactly the same as ou in house or ouch. Now say ouch, now say it without the ch. Done.

Second syllable: dolf. Say dolphin, now say it without the in just dolfff. Let's put those two sounds together Ou-dolff. Piet Oudolf. Done and dusted.

This free elocution lesson was brought to you courtesy of your friendly Internet neighbourhood gardener Yolanda Elizabet from Bliss!

O, and if perchance you know Mr Swift personally, please put the man out of his misery and direct him  Bliss-ward.

NB all the pictures shown in this post were taken in June 2008 at Piet Oudolf's garden and nursery.

copyright 2010 Y.E.W. Heuzen

Egg, Bacon, Spam, Baked Beans, Spam, Sausage and Spam

Spammity spam, wonderful spaaaaaaaaaaaaaaam! That seems to be on the menu lately and frightfully often too. Is it me or has there been an influx of spam recently?

Comments is something we bloggers love so please dear reader, keep them coming.  But spamments? Not so much!

It's very annoying when your blog gets hit by spamments. At one time a fully paid up member of the SadPeopleRUs society left 12 spamments on 1 of my posts. Twelve! How silly is that? Of course I removed them all forthwith. Fortunately this doesn't happen all that often. What does happen with nauseatingly regularity is spam left on older blog posts. The reasoning behind this tactic is probably that you are too lazy to search for that old post and remove the spam. Ha, how little do they know me. 

Blogger has been busy developing new thingumabobs and has given us, apart from the word verification thingy that stops spam bots, a new little tool to help fight evil spam! And fight it we will for the sake of Christmas, puppydogs, and fluffy kittens and stuff!

If you haven't discovered the latest Blogger Fight-That-Evil-Spam thingy yourself here's how you do it:

-go to Settings

-Click on Comments

- scroll down a bit till you reach comment moderation on posts older than ..

- fill in how many days you want

-save settings

This way you'll never have to hunt for spam on older posts ever again.

Of course you could also opt for moderating all comments before they appear on your blog but I personally am not that keen to spam-sit (simply can't be bothered) so I've chosen not to go that route.

Copyright 2010 Y.E.W. Heuzen

WeR3

Outdoor space, the final frontier

These are the voyages of the Bliss Gardener

Her continuing mission to explore strange new worlds

To seek out new life

and new civilisations

To boldly go where no gardener has gone before

Quite some time ago it struck me that embarking on a journey in space is strangely akin to starting out as a gardener as you never know what will happen next, who you'll meet and what new things you will discover. Thought it might be fun to do a post about it, especially as quite a few of my USA garden blogger friends are Trekkies as I am. I discovered Science Fiction when I was 11 years old and have never stopped reading and watching it since.

Last week I finally got a new computer, a notebook this time. My old desktop pc was so decrepit it had oak cladding and was as fast as very thick molasses. Now I've embarked on a new journey of discovery; how does my new notebook work? In the process I've discovered unknown depths in the use of both my own and the English language. Fortunately you were not there to witness it.

Today is a bit of a special day for me as I am using my new notebook for the very first time to write a post for my Bliss blog and today it's also 3 years ago that I started this blog, which explains the tittle.

Never thought that blogging could/would be so much fun and it would be such a great and fun way to explore new gardening worlds, to seek out new garden friends and encounter strange new media such as blogger and twitter.


copyright 2010, Y.E.W. Heuzen