In the interim, use the Contact Form to nominate a site — your own or someone else’s — to be in the spotlight!

Why?

The answer is very simple:  The Garden participates in the October breast cancer awareness program, as described in the post below.

There have been more visitors to this site in relationship to that post than ever before in this site’s history.

That post generated more comments than any other post.  Many folks took the time to leave a comment in support of the campaign to raise money for the American Cancer Society.  In fact, comments are still being posted expressing support.

And yet  . . . not a single person participated in the campaign.  Not one.  Not a single penny was raised.

Why?  Well, I have lots of theories, none of which really matter.

The fact that so many people feigned interest and support, but completely failed to follow through, disappointed and discouraged me to the point that I decided to sell the site and quit blogging. In fact, it has taken me many months to muster the strength to sign on and write this post expressing my feelings.

We are by nature flawed and imperfect beings.  But that not a single poster stepped up and put his/her money where his/her comment was by actually making a donation was too much for me.  Just. too. much.

From time to time, we receive requests from bloggers and webmasters asking us to spotlight their site, most of which we have, until now, respectfully declined.

Now, however, we are encouraging you to ask that your site be in the spotlight.

Is there a catch? Of sorts.

You’ve see those cute little logos on many sites announcing that a review published there costs a specific dollar amount. For instance, John Chow charges a whopping $400 for a review and other sites fall in line behind him in terms of cost.

Now the Garden will put your site in its spotlight for a fee: $35.00 or more for a full post all about your blog and why our readers should pay your site a visit. For $25.00, we will include a discussion about your site in a recap post encouraging our readers to visit your site, along with no more than four other sites. (In other words, recaps or summary entries will discuss no more than five blogs per post. We will publish as many entries as necessary in order to include all participating sites.)

For $10.00, we will include your site, along with those of the folks who pay the amounts listed above, to a linked wall of sites that have participated in this promotion that will be mounted in the sidebar and remain there until the 2008 Pink for October campaign kicks off.

Before you begin hunting for a PayPal link, however, please note: The fees are not to be paid to the Garden.

You see, the Magical Rose Garden is offering something that, as far as we can tell, has never been done in the blogging world before:

Blog Spotlight Posts for the American Cancer Society.

That’s right. We are offering blog “reviews” for charity. A novel, unique and, we believe, revolutionary concept.

So from now until 11:59 p.m. (PDT) October 31, 2007, if you make a donation to the American Cancer Society in one of the amounts set forth above and then e-mail proof of your donation to thegardener@magicalrosegarden.com, you will not only be able to spend your money on a very worthy and tax-deductible cause, you will also earn some recognition for and, hopefully, traffic to your site via the Garden.

Simply click on this link to make your donation. You may place “no restriction” on your donation or target it to “cancer research” in general or, more specifically, breast, prostate, colorectal or lung cancer. You may make your donation in honor or memory of a loved one and the American Cancer Society will notify the individual(s) you specify of your generosity.

After you have made your donation, notify the Gardener in one of two ways: 1) Send a screenshot of the page displayed on the American Cancer Society’s site confirming your donation; or 2) forward the e-mail you receive from the American Cancer Society confirming your donation to the Gardener.

Upon receipt of confirmation of your donation, made any time between now and 11:59 p.m. (PST) October 31, 2007, the Gardener will then visit your site and publish a post spotlighting your site in conjunction with this fund-raising campaign.

Spread the word! Make a donation and submit your site!
The Gardener stands ready to visit blogs and write posts day and night between now and the end of October in order to help fund a cure for and prevention of cancer in all of its various forms.
If the members of the blogging community unite, we can make life a bit more like a beautiful Garden in which we can linger among friends. Thank you in advance for your participation in Pink for October and, more particularly, this fundraiser.

Trackposted to Perri Nelson’s Website, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, Rosemary’s Thoughts, AZAMATTEROFACT, The Random Yak, DeMediacratic Nation, 123beta, , Right Truth, The Populist, Stuck On Stupid, Cao’s Blog, The Bullwinkle Blog, Phastidio.net, The Amboy Times, , Conservative Cat, Adeline and Hazel, Nuke’s, Faultline USA, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, The World According to Carl, Blue Star Chronicles, The Pink Flamingo, and Church and State, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Obviously, donations to the American Cancer Society and other charitable organizations working to prevent and cure breast cancer are encouraged.

But you can help in other ways and you don’t have to wait until October 1. Show your support now! Grab the pink ribbon displayed here or the badge in the sidebar. Download one of the many other badges and display it on your site now to help spread the word so that other folks can be ready to transform their sites at the stroke of midnight on October 1.

Matthew Oliphant is responsible for this great promotion. He explains that he got the idea from an “offhand” remark by a coworker. Read his kick-off post detailing several ways that you can get involved and contact him or his fellow organizers if you have ideas about other things you can do to help make this year’s campaign a huge success.

Last year, about 1,500 blogs went pink in October and the organizers would be thrilled if 15 times that number went pink this year.

So how about you? Are you going to make your site Pink for October? If so, make sure that you sign up!

Instead of featuring blogs as a whole, the Rising Blogger focuses on a single post from each site that it features. And its proprietor, Judd Corizan, bestows upon the author a Rising Blogger Award that can be proudly displayed on his/her site. Judd offers readers the opportunity to nominate posts. And after a blogger has received the award, he asks them to “pay it forward” by nominating another writer for the honor.

What impressed us about Judd’s efforts is the fact that genuinely appreciates good writing. He actively seeks out posts that contribute to the conversations taking place here in cyberspace each day by sharing a unique perspective, remembrance or experience that we can all relate to, learn from or enjoy a chuckle over.

There are many posts to choose from in order to give you an idea of the kind of writing he rewards. For instance, he honored “The Grief That is Close” at impactEDnurse.com, a site authored by a nurse who wanted his readers to know that “for us it is important to take every opportunity to swing our happiness around our heads, to let it unravel in wild arcs until it wipes against the walls.” For him and his fellow medical professionals,

a great grief waits close by. Always.

A grief that will pounce without forewarning. A grief that will crush us with the weight of every child we have seen die, and roar in our ears with the memory of every person we have wrapped in plastic, and claw us open with busy sadness and drag us off to uneasy, restless nights.

In contrast, he recently honored Crescendo from a new romance-focused blog, Love Writes. The ecstasy described there stands in stark contrast to the heartbreak of Slightly Broken from The Secret Back-Up Blog.

Judd also has a keen eye for satire, as evidenced by his honoring King of the Cubicle: A Look at Corporate America from Inside the Cubicle Farm.

Judd’s profile says his profession is “education” which leads us to wonder if he is an English teacher. We could find no link to a blog where Judd displays his own writing beyond his descriptions of the posts he bestows the Rising Blogger Award upon. Given his eclectic tastes, we bet his own blog would be a fascinating read.

A site like Judd’s provides a great service to the blogging community because it helps readers find wonderful blogs to visit and helps bloggers get acquainted. We recommend that you visit The Rising Blogger regularly.

Fear not, ye who are cynical readers. The Garden is not going to be spotlighting only blogs maintained by folks with cancer.

However, after stumbling upon Heather’s blog, we felt it definitely deserved to be in the spotlight even though it follows our focus on WhyMommy’s battle.

Heather explains that she was diagnosed in April 2007 with a brain tumor: Anaplastic Oligoastrocytoma (mixed tumor. Surgeons removed 99.9% of the growth and she is presently undergoing chemotherapy and radiation. Two surgeons told her that the tumor was inoperable. But in testament yet again to the power of the Internet and the communities established in cyberspace, her readers raised more than $14,000 so that she could travel to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota where a top neurosurgeon not only provided a different response, but operated immediately.

What led us to write about Heather is the fact that she is upbeat, hopeful and enthusiastic about life in the face of all that she has endured thus far. And she has endured a lot.

You see, Heather’s daughter, Emma Grace, is a five-year-old who is not only autistic, but was born with congestive heart failure. At the age of five months, little Emma Grace underwent a heart transplant.

So Heather has a lot to live for.

In addition to Emma Grace, she also has two older children, Easton and Elijah.

Heather is doing what many of us imagine we would do were we to be diagnosed with a potentially terminal illness. Taking stock of her life. It is posts like this recent (August 29) entry, Cancer and Forgiveness, that really jumped out at us as we perused her site:

Now, I take a look back at my past and wonder. I wonder if I had known then that I had cancer, would I do anything different. Was I the friend that I should have been, the wife, the mother, the daughter? When people looked at my life, did they think good things, or bad. Did I bring a smile to their face or a scowl to their hearts.

I would love to tell you that the answer was super positive, and that I hadn’t hurt anyone in my life. But that would be false. I am human, after all. I have done my fair share of hurting people, and I feel horrible when thinking about the people whose lives I have touched in a negative way.

Then I started thinking about people who I have been hurt by. Ouch. That one stings a bit more. Cancer has changed my view of myself. I no longer look at myself as “entitled”. I am owed nothing. This life is what God destined it to be for me, and nothing more. When I think of people in my past who have hurt me or who I feel have done me wrong, I smile. I know they didn’t mean to, and even if they did, it isn’t worth hanging onto anymore. I can make a conscience choice to live in the past and be angry and bitter, or I can choose the road less traveled and look towards whatever the future holds for me, forgiveness and all.

When Heather first started blogging (entries date back to June 2006), she wrote about all the things mothers typically blog about: Dealing with her kids, trying to mother them to the best of her ability, sneaking away for a bubble bath and a good read, her new hairdo, attempting to be a good friend and wife, her desire to make sense of her life . . . and, of course, the trial that no family should have to endure: The devastating illness of a child. She always wrote about her youngest daughter with unconditional, undying love and devotion, sharing her frustrations and anger along the way, too, in an open and honest way.

But with all that she has been through, her writing has evolved. She shares with her readers what she has learned from the “CanSer Schmancer” she has stared down and defeated, if not physically (yet), then surely psychologically:

It isn’t about the cancer, it isn’t about what it has the ability to do to our bodies, it isn’t about the treatments or the part of us it takes away . . . it’s about the journey. It’s about rediscovering the parts of yourself that you never ever knew or dreamed existed, and giving them room to grow and room to take flight. It’s about seeing life through cancer’s eyes and being better because of it, being more whole and more alive despite it.

It’s about living.

Sure there are going to be days that we feel like a Mac truck just bulldozed over us. There are going to be days when you look in the mirror and think “Who is that person, and what did she do with my hair?” But there are going to be days that we are fully alive and energized too, it’s part of the journey. It’s part of life. But it’s not the only part.

It’s not the defining part.

I am still a mother. I am still a wife. I am still a daughter. I am still a daughter of the King. I am still the same Heather that I was before I found out that I had cancer, just a little more a lot more mature and a heck of a lot less naive. I still have the same heart, the same dreams, the same desires. I am still me, cancer can’t take that away.

It only made me stronger.

We could keep quoting Heather, but instead, why don’t you stop by for a visit? We guarantee that you will come away feeling blessed and enriched by spending a few moments with her. Let her know that the Gardener sent you.

This morning, while surfing here and there, we discovered a post at Whirlwind entitled “It Could Save Your Life” with the tag line “Keep it going.”

Reading closer, we realized that the words there were actually written by WhyMommy who describes herself as a “scientist turned stay-at-home-mom, always looking for something fun and exciting to do with the kids.” Photos of her children grace the sidebar: “Widget was born August 2004; Little Bear in January 2007. Dad and the dog round out our busy house of boys. We laugh, we play, we build, and we learn.”

The day after learning that her mother-in-law had breast cancer, WhyMommy shared that after giving birth to her youngest this past January, she was unable to nurse on the right side.

In light of her mother-in-law’s diagnosis, she visited her physician and described the symptoms, certain that she would leave the examination room reassured that all was well:

It dimpled. It ached. And the surface? Ewwww, it looks (and feels) like an orange peel, in places. Lumps, dimples, texture, and all. In fact, it had been getting that way for quite some time, but I really hadn’t noticed. I’ve been so concerned about the baby’s latch and feeding expertise, I kind of forgot to consider that it might be me. It’s looked funny for a while, and it’s getting stranger and more orange-peely and lumpy. And now? No milk. None at all. It’s an official nonworking boob.

And it feels funny.

So I hightailed it to my OB, who happened to have an appointment open up today, and went in, asking him to reassure me that all was normal and this is just one of those things that can happen upon weaning.

Um, no.

Her mystified doctor referred her to a breast cancer center which left her understandably terrified. On June 24, 2007, a lump was detected. The next day, the surgeon collected one skin and seven core biopsies.

The Diagnosis was received on June 26, 2007:

There’s no easy way to say this.

I have breast cancer.

I also have a 5 month old son, a 2.5 year old son, a wonderful adoring and supportive husband, a fantastic family, and good friends who love me.

Thank God for that.

I may need you all.

Please be careful in your comments to me right now — I love and need the support and comments, but I will NOT feel sorry for myself, and I won’t have anyone else feeling sorry for me either right now. I’m in this to win, and I’m going to fight it with every fiber of my being. I have no time to wait and mope about this, for I start chemo on/about July 13. Two weeks from today. The day my baby son turns 6 months old.

If you pray, pray for my strength and success in this fight.

I will continue to post every day, so I don’t slip into sadness over here. Help me stay focused and positive, okay?

I will need you all.

To be specific, WhyMommy has inflammatory breast cancer which has already invaded her lymphatic system.

Team WhyMommy came into being on June 29, 2007, at Don’t Take the Repeats. Canape has established a Wall of Support. If you would like your blog to be listed, just grab the badge and link back to Don’t Take the Repeats or write a post about WhyMommy’s fight and send the link to Canape. Whymommy is appreciative of the support she is receiving and endorses Team Whymommy:

I’ve gone public with my cancer, from the very moment of diagnosis, for several reasons. One reason is to help educate other women and young moms that cancer can strike at any time, at any age – and you don’t even have to have a lump! Another reason is because I’ve gotten accustomed to typing out my thoughts and feelings — and I’m very likely to have some on this topic. A few. But the third — the third is very selfish.

I need people to know that I have cancer. I need them not to look away at the sight of my ugly bald head. I need them not to pity me when they see the young woman with the hat slowly moving along behind the two-kid stroller. I need them to cheer me on, instead, and to smile when they see me, and to help me see the good side of life. I need their thoughts and prayers and healing light and good spirits. Because I am not likely to be able to sustain this fight and positive outlook on my own.

Whymommy is undergoing chemotherapy which will be followed by surgery in January. Last night she republished “Because I am Not Ready to Move On” and has asked bloggers to share her article with their readers in order to educate others about the invidious disease she is fighting. Here are Whymommy’s words:

We hear a lot about breast cancer these days. One in eight women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in their lifetimes, and there are millions living with it in the U.S. today alone. But did you know that there is more than one type of breast cancer?

I didn’t. I thought that breast cancer was all the same. I figured that if I did my monthly breast self-exams, and found no lump, I’d be fine.

Oops. It turns out that you don’t have to have a lump to have breast cancer. Six weeks ago, I went to my OB/GYN because my breast felt funny. It was red, hot, inflamed, and the skin looked…funny. But there was no lump, so I wasn’t worried. I should have been. After a round of antibiotics didn’t clear up the inflammation, my doctor sent me to a breast specialist and did a skin punch biopsy. That test showed that I have inflammatory breast cancer, a very aggressive cancer that can be deadly.

Inflammatory breast cancer is often misdiagnosed as mastitis because many doctors have never seen it before and consider it rare. “Rare” or not, there are over 100,000 women in the U.S. with this cancer right now; only half will survive five years. Please call your OB/GYN if you experience several of the following symptoms in your breast, or any unusual changes: redness, rapid increase in size of one breast, persistent itching of breast or nipple, thickening of breast tissue, stabbing pain, soreness, swelling under the arm, dimpling or ridging (for example, when you take your bra off, the bra marks stay – for a while), flattening or retracting of the nipple, or a texture that looks or feels like an orange (called peau d’orange). Ask if your GYN is familiar with inflammatory breast cancer, and tell her that you’re concerned and want to come in to rule it out.

There is more than one kind of breast cancer. Inflammatory breast cancer is the most aggressive form of breast cancer out there, and early detection is critical. It’s not usually detected by mammogram. It does not usually present with a lump. It may be overlooked with all of the changes that our breasts undergo during the years when we’re pregnant and/or nursing our little ones. It’s important not to miss this one.

Inflammatory breast cancer is detected by women and their doctors who notice a change in one of their breasts. If you notice a change, call your doctor today. Tell her about it. Tell her that you have a friend with this disease, and it’s trying to kill her. Now you know what I wish I had known before six weeks ago.

You don’t have to have a lump to have breast cancer.

We support Whymommy and encourage all of our readers to do the same by displaying the badge and visiting Toddler Planet regularly to see how her treatment is going, offer a word of support and encouragement and — most importantly — converse with Whymommy about anything but cancer. Leave her a comment containing a joke, story, link . . . and remind her that life, including hers, is ongoing. Your support will infuse her with courage and strength just as your blog post containing her words, copied from the Garden into your own blog, will help spread the word and save lives.

The Magical Rose Garden is proud to stand in solidarity with Whymommy and all who are fighting any form of cancer.

Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Perri Nelson’s Website, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, DeMediacratic Nation, 123beta, Adam’s Blog, Right Truth, Stuck On Stupid, Webloggin, Cao’s Blog, The Amboy Times, The Bullwinkle Blog, Leaning Straight Up, , Conservative Cat, Conservative Thoughts, Pursuing Holiness, third world county, Wake Up America, Woman Honor Thyself, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, The World According to Carl, Pirate’s Cove, Nuke’s news and views, Blue Star Chronicles, The Pink Flamingo, Wyvern Dreams, CommonSenseAmerica, Dumb Ox Daily News, High Desert Wanderer, Public Eye, and Church and State, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

However, the photo of the site owner, Robin, in the upper right corner caught our eye. She looks like she could be your next door neighbor — a pretty woman with a lovely smile and lively eyes. The photo appears to be a candid shot, not a retouched studio portrait (there are many of those on these types of sites) and there is something in that unassuming picture — perhaps her sparkling blue eyes? — that grabs you and makes you want to read a bit more. It is as though she is saying, “C’mon, read some posts. You know you want to.”

Obviously, we had to learn more about this intriguing blogger, so we clicked on the link to her profile and were shocked to learn that she is the mother of eleven children and thirteen grandchildren. And she homeschooled them! (Yes, there are photos.) Not only does she blog, she is an author and has a number of other hobbies.

Robin explains why she blogs and the first reason listed is to “bring glory to God.” She explains that the site is her “expression, a celebration of things I enjoy and believe will encourage others. God is the focus of my life and will therefore be reflected here.” Whether or not you share Robin’s religious viewpoints, you can be enriched by continuing to peruse her writings. For instance, the four remaining reasons she blogs transcend differing spiritual outlooks: To grow spiritually, learn new things, make friends and organize her thoughts and writing. Those are goals that all bloggers can relate to irrespective of their faith.

Robin hosts two memes on her site, one of which is brand new today!

Super Simple Spiritual Sunday is Robin’s new way to engage in some “link love.” All you do is give a shout-out to other bloggers by listing the best posts you have read during the week, complete with links to them. As Robin says, it couldn’t be more “super simple” but it is a great way to validate and thank other writers for enriching your life during the week and certainly comports with our goal in establishing this Garden.

Her second meme, Fruit of the Spirit Friday, is more distinctly rooted in Christian principles, but you can still participate if you subscribe to another faith because the “fruit” referenced are personal qualities that everyone ascribes to: Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

Robin writes that “[m]aking a mental commitment to write on a fruit of the spirit each week should make you more aware of your spiritual walk and hopefully prompt you to examine the fruit in your life several times during the week.” She lists some suggested questions for you to consider and write about, but you may write about the particular trait upon which you are focused in any manner you deem appropriate, adapting your approach in accordance with your own beliefs.

We think that Robin is contributing in a number of positive ways to the blogosphere by not only sharing her own thoughts, observations and advice, but encouraging others to do the same in an introspective, positive manner. So go pay her a visit and tell her you came by via the Garden!

Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, A Blog For All, The Random Yak, DeMediacratic Nation, Right Truth, Big Dog’s Weblog, Stuck On Stupid, Webloggin, The Amboy Times, Leaning Straight Up, Conservative Cat, Pursuing Holiness, Diary of the Mad Pigeon, third world county, Wake Up America, Woman Honor Thyself, stikNstein… has no mercy, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, The World According to Carl, Blue Star Chronicles, Nuke’s news and views, Pirate’s Cove, Dumb Ox Daily News, High Desert Wanderer, Gone Hollywood, and Church and State, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Iris was born and raised in Germany, but lives in Arizona, which she describes as having two seasons: “Hot and hotter.” Her blog design is curious: An alien-looking creature is depicted as an animate pincushion. The title, “Sting My Heart,” apparently relates to the New Testament book of Ephesians 2:8-10, an excerpt from which, “saved by grace — through faith,” serves as her blog’s description. Make no mistake: Iris writes from a Christian viewpoint. Individual pages are devoted to describing what she believes and virtually all of the links displayed relate in one way or another to Christian topics.

What caught our attention, however, was “Thankful Thursday,” a weekly meme that Iris began hosting earlier this year. (She has been participating for about a year.) Previously, the program was hosted by Chrixean after the idea was conceived by Running2Ks. This meme has grown dramatically since “Sting My Heart” became the hub: Iris tells us that the number of participants has tripled over the course of the past four months from around 20 to more than 60 bloggers joining in each week.

Although Iris writes from a particular religious viewpoint, we could find no indication that the program is limited to folks who share her beliefs. On the contrary, Iris explains:

There are no rules for it, except to look around you and give thanks – for even the smallest things in your life. The two other things I am asking you: please visit all the other [bloggers] who leave their link here, and that you add the little graphic to the posts . . . Questions? Just let me know, okay? Oh, BTW – I always add some Scripture passages to my post, BUT that is not a requirement to participate — just something I like to do.

So if you are interested in giving thanks each Thursday, all you need to do is head over to Sting My Heart, let Iris know that you are playing and then post your entry!

Lastly, we commend Iris for her monthly “Encouragement Award” by which she acknowledges other bloggers who have inspired, supported, buoyed her. Not only does she write a special post about the particular blogger, she gifts them with a nifty little badge they can display on their blog and a permanent link in her sidebar. We think Iris’ idea is superb and most certainly in tune with our philosophy here in the Garden. Iris exemplifies our idea of a blogger who strives to make the world around her — especially the blog world — a better place. She offers a kind and encouraging word — indeed, a special award — to others, displays a generous spirit, and seeks to grasp meaning in the mundane, conceptualizing and giving context to her own life and the lives of those she interacts with.

Stop by “Sting My Heart” and get to know Iris. We think you’ll be glad you did!

Trackposted to Perri Nelson’s Website, The Random Yak, guerrilla radio, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, On the Horizon, Blue Star Chronicles, The Pink Flamingo, Conservative Cat, Right Voices, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Desiree began her blog in December 2006, with the stated purpose of “inspir[ing] ideas within each other that can lead to each of us helping to change the world and make this a better world.” She declares that she has no desire to “tell others how to live,” but, rather, seeks to “spread good will, hope and inspiration to whatever small part of the world I can manage to captivate as my audience.”
Desiree challenges her readers to think about their contributions to the world. For instance, in Reverberations, one of her earliest entries, she asks readers to contemplate the ways in which our actions reverberate and have far-reaching consequences that we aren’t always even aware of. Reminding us that we are all imperfect beings who make mistakes, she reaffirms that we all should strive to take stock of our self-worth and envision what our lives would be like if we loved ourselves more. “Part of feeling good about yourself is in fact being good. . . It does mean doing your best and trying really hard to be a person you would be proud to have for a friend.” Acknowledging that “[t]he negative is the path of least resistance,” Desiree encourages her readers not only to improve themselves, but also practice random acts of kindness for others.

There are many more posts to savor, offered in a Table of Contents format if you wish to read all of Desiree’s writing from her blog’s inception to current entries. Pay Desiree a visit and let her know that you are there via the Garden! We think you’ll find your life enriched by reading her entries and interacting with her!