I’ve recently begun writing about gardening in the Detroit edition of examiner.com, an online magazine specializing in local coverage of multiple markets (currently ~40). But getting viewers of this site to read those posts, while nice, is not the reason for posting this.

Although I have been taking a breather from posting (anywhere) while I deal with a recurrent health problem, after several months experience with The Examiner I can attest that they pay their bills and that income continues to accrue even if you have to take a break from writing.

If this sounds appealing to you, I’d like you to follow TWO links. The first is a short video about how to fill in the application so that I will get the referral fee. If you do not fill in my “Examiner number” (5189) in the correct place, I don’t get paid for the referral. Links after the break.

The Examiner pays this fee, not you, so please don’t skip this step.

Here’s the link to the application video. (It opens in a new window so that you can refer to it, if needed, while filling out the application itself.)

The second link is the link to the actual application. As soon as you are accepted and have posted two articles, I am credited with your referral and you become eligible for the referral program yourself.

Here’s the  link to the actual application.

Is this a good thing? Yes. Right now they are running a contest which includes not only their standard $50 referral fee, but prizes for the top 20 referrers nationwide.

If you can generate 20 new writers you will earn $1,000 plus have a shot at a Kindle, Wii or other cool loot. All of this, of course, is on top of the penny per page view.

I am a Christian and, as such, subscribe to the Golden Rule of doing to others only as I would have them do to me. That’s a part of why I am recommending this employer.

However, I also know that many of my readers are either Wiccan or Pagan (the gardening crowd seems to include a lot of people who reverence the creation), so I would remind them of the Laws of Three-fold Return and the Law of Seven-fold Return. You can take this employment tip as just one more ‘internet freebie’ or you can acknowledge the worth of this tip by giving me credit for presenting it to you. In either case, it’s only reasonable for you to expect others to treat you the same … and then some.

With 40 markets, The Examiner still has vacancies for hundreds of topical writers (it needn’t be about gardening). I’ve referred four IRL friends. Three have read the deal, liked it and signed up. None of them chose to write about gardening. Whether you want to write about fine wine, cheap tools, elephant lingerie or off-grid survival, The Examiner can probably accommodate you.

I’ll get a referral fee. You’ll get a writing job. Sound fair?m

Each article you post will pay about a penny per view (cross-linking of serial / related posts really pays off here!). And, once you have been accepted and begun to publish, you’ll also be able to receive the referral bonus for encouraging others to apply.

They are not demanding a Michener / Buck / Steinbeck … just a reliable blogger who can write in ‘third person’, stay on topic, be worth reading, paste on a (legal) photo and do the same thing all over again in a day or two. One short article won’t pay you much … not this month, not next, not ever. But a regular series of short articles will add up this month plus next month plus next month … year after year. I’m looking to ‘officially’ retire in the near future, and this is one of the ways I intend to get past the Alpo aisle in the grocery store.

One nice feature Examiner offers is that you can use content there that you have also posted elsewhere and you can use (your original) content that you first posted there anywhere else you choose … book, blog, magazine … wherever. I’m not a lawyer, but that’s how I understand the agreement I signed. So a series of blog entries could, when re-edited, become that book you’ve always wanted to write. Think about that.

Tell’ ‘em Bill Canaday (#5189) sent you!

PS This is a straight referral program, not MLM.

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I’ve been approached about writing an e-learning course centered around organic gardening. At first I blew it off, but now, about a month later, the same “PhD Lady” is asking me to reconsider. I figured that I would simply fall off her radar when I dealt lightly with the idea the first time. But that didn’t happen.

So I am reconsidering.

If you were to take such a course, what would you expect it to cover? Obviously, it would have to address the various forms of composting, sources of mineral powders, dealing with pests … but what else should I cover to make it unique – and uniquely valuable?

Another suggestion I have been tossed (different source) is to write an e-book about organic gardening. So I am thinking about maybe writing a 100 page introduction to the topic and see how that sells.

If the e-book had enough information in it that you could just toss it to a tyro gardener and they could begin gardening using organic principles, would it be worth maybe $5 to you?

I’ve been an organic gardener for roughly 20 years. In that time I’ve read a lot of material from a lot of sources. I’ve learned that a lot of that material is mindlessly copied and repeated … because it simply isn’t true. If it were being tried out, the falsehoods would fall away.

I find that some people are writing about practical matters who have no experience with them or who only know the prissy way to go about things. I’ve got some great produce baskets that I’d like to sell you for about $50 … but I’ll also show you how to make them yourself for about $3 in material and a couple hours work. Then you can sell them all day long if you want.

I want to spare you the baloney … simply take you to the techniques, tools and perceptions that work. Along the way, we’ll take some interesting side trips and maybe even have a little fun.

If you’re interested, grab your favorite straw hat and hang on!

Or, at least, the uglier parts of it.

If you haven’t given any thought to becoming a Guerilla Gardener or, if you have thought about it but simply haven’t taken action, you really owe it to yourself to see how much beauty one guy with buck teeth has brought to Zurich, Switzerland.

http://www.maurice-maggi.ch/blumengraffiti/guerilla-gardening/ggtv-guerrilla-gardener-maurice-maggi-zurich/

There are two videos at the above link. Watch them in succession and then ask yourself if you don’t know of some locations in your neighborhood that could use some cheering up.

Maggi simply gets the seed below the surface, hiding it from birds and insects. He doesn’t water it. He doesn’t fertilize it … nature handles that just fine. It would appear that he plants hollyhocks and poppy’s together … both can tolerate fairly dry conditions.

He used a term that I was unfamiliar with: biotope. I’ve looked it up for my benefit and passed it along for yours. This definition comes from Wikipedia; YMMV.

Biotope is an area of uniform environmental conditions providing a living place for a specific assemblage of plants and animals. Biotope is almost synonymous with the term habitat, but while the subject of a habitat is a species or a population, the subject of a biotope is a biological community.

^{I Stumbled this a few minutes ago … I hope it takes off. If you have a way to help it along, please do so.}

^{Here’s my review in Stumble:}

“Guerilla gardening means the planting of public spaces without permission. Maurice Maggi has been during this in Zurich for ~20 years. He’s the source of the hollyhocks that beautify that city. Now, do your part in YOUR city. For more info, Google for "guerilla gardening".”

I was checking Google for some of the keywords I want to rank for and was tickled to find that this blog is on the front page for multiple keywords multiple times. That, as any blogger will tell you, is the sweet smell of success! So I called Mrs. Bill in and we had a good laugh, feeling somewhat giddy about those results.  However, while I was at it, I decided to look at one of the blogs that ranked with me.

Wow, did I ever get my eyes opened.

I was stunned to find that the discussion of gardening activism has only two viewpoints: “The Milquetoasts” staying quietly at home while tending a few pansies and “Grub & Snapdragon Alphatrowel” set to change the world overnight: by force, if need be. There didn’t seem to be a middle-ground perspective. In this case, the debate developed around the disputes regarding global climate change. I’ll agree that this is an interesting problem, but I won’t agree that this should be the central focus of gardening activists. The problem with this polarity is that most of us occupy a middle ground, finding it defensible and a firm base from which to extend our reach. One. Garden. At. A. Time.

What good does it do to fight un-winnable battles while neglecting the victories that are actually within our grasp? Global warming is just one of these un-winnable battles. Think for a moment and you will uncover others, such as off-shore oil drilling or the use of chemical fertilizers that has created a vast dead-zone at the mouth of the Mississippi. It takes big resources to fight big enemies.

What about those of us who want food independence for ourselves and to turn our neighbors on to this quiet revolution? We can’t stop the UN … or the WTO … they’ve got more bullets than we have seeds. But we can render their policies as they affect our dinner table moot.

That’s right: we can stop them at the fork and that is a victory that the global-warming mongers and nay-sayers can never win. To the extent their focus has been blunted and deflected into empty debates, their power to cause positive change has been frittered away. Meanwhile, the real movers and shakers continue silently along the paths of their original agendas.

Carbon sequestration? That seems to be the buzz-word du jour with the climate change crowd. The whole argument centers around the question of CO2 … its effects and its sources. No one seems to have a problem with the two molecules of Oxygen, lots of people object to that single liberated molecule of carbon. Well, here’s a fact that can’t be argued: Every gardener who ever turned garden or animal waste back into the soil sequestered carbon; sometimes a surprisingly large amount of it. It isn’t unusual for a single gardener to make a ton or more of compost in one season and to turn it back into the soil at the start of the next. Whether the purpose in so doing is to enrich the soil, reduce the load on garbage dumps or to sequester carbon willy-nilly is irrelevant. The point is that returning nutrients to the soil has always been and will always be a net positive for the humans who inhabit this tiny rock with its microscopic layer of breathable air and its limited habitable zones.

Can’t wrap your head around sequestration? Try this out: “The average conventional produce item travels 1,500 miles, using, if shipped by tractor-trailer, one gallon of fossil fuel per hundred pounds.”

To sequester the stuff means to pull it back out of the atmosphere and tuck it away somewhere safe for a while. But, to grow food locally means not putting the carbon dioxide into the atmosphere to begin with.

That’s my brand of garden activism. Simply learn what the right things to do are … and do them. Over, and over again.

You don’t have to stick your neck out to be a garden activist or engage in full-on food politics to earn some sort of street cred with me. It’s enough if you can plant a few seeds, put back a few jars and tuck some compost back into the soil for next year. Anything beyond that is gravy.

I pass out bonus points like the government passes out tax shelters for the rich if you teach one or more in the current generation of youth why and how to do this. Let them preserve, by whatever means are suitable, some food for their families. It will stop being theory and start being valuable.

So, whatever level you can contribute at is good. Keep those pansies growing (dig some compost or manure in around the roots, eh?), keep the heat on the Department of Agriculture, the FDA, the EPA and all the rest of the alphabet soup of government and quasi-government agencies. Hold their toes to a rip-roaring fire if you can. Or just quietly get things organized for the next nice day in your garden.

It’s all good.

– Bill