Oh my goodness ...

I am, as a close friend of mine would say, gobstruck. Now I know what they feel like on Oscar night. You know, they're sat there at their tables trying to look as if they're really enjoying themselves while someone a lot more famous jokes around and fumbles with the envelope. Smiles are fixed on with Bostik and they're all ready to applaud and make gracious comments when they lose. And then come the words And the winner is ... and suddenly they're up on the stage looking dazed and stuttering out something about being sure they'd lose and not having even thought about an acceptance speech.

No, I've never believed it either, but in this case it's true. When The Balcony Garden was nominated for Best Container Gardening Blog in the Blotanical awards, I looked at the competition and thought Well, you can forget about that then .... I knew three of the other blogs nominated well - Soliloquy, Flowergardengirl, and Plants are the Strangest People - and when I toddled over to have a look at the fourth - Garden Geek - the depression just deepened.

I was sure I knew the order we'd all come in. I'd even got this post mentally written out, congratulating the winner, talking about how chuffed I was even to get into the final five and thanking the people who did vote for me.

But that's where I don't have to change anything in the planned post. Because I was over the moon to think that enough people liked the BG enough to get me into the final five, and I do want to say a huge thank you to all of you who voted the blog into first place - OK, OK and even to those who just thought about voting for me, Mania.

Because, for all the categories, voting was enormously difficult. Time after time there were at least two blogs nominated which I thought were equally good. How do you choose ? I tied myself in knots trying to be fair, looking carefully at all the blogs in the categories I was voting for and mentally awarding points for all sorts of things to see who came out top. And I'm still not sure that I got it right.

As for the winners - well, all of them are obviously excellent blogs and well deserving. And in general, a blog which I thought missed out in one category won in another. But there are a few results which, personally, I found surprising - blogs which I thought would walk away with an award but "only" came third or fourth. "Only". It's a word which doesn't make sense given just how strong the competition was in many of the categories. And as I said, it was certainly true in mine. So if you've never come across any of the other four blogs which were nominated, do yourself a favour and go visit them. But only, of course, if you promise not to vote for them next year :)