Hello, All!

Loving this site and the weekly newsletter, and learning from everyone's questions. And the photos? Wow!

The thing is, I'm afraid I'm totally confused about Badges and Acorns. I was browsing my homepage today and see that I have 6 Acorns. How did I get those? And I'm advised to customize my profile by buying badges. What are the badges for?

Can anyone help me understand?

Oh, and wait! Where did the smilies and emojis go?

the acorns are the "currency" for this web site ....you can "tip" other users for their contributions, comments, wisdom, guidance or for a thought provoking photograph ....

you may get an acorn for your contributions ....

the badges are icons for "things" you have an interest in ...might be a type of plant, a hobby or region

you can "buy" badges for 5 acorns each

badges can found by going to the top right of this page and clicking on the down arrow and choosing Your user name "profile" ....
to > Your Actions:
to > Manage your microbadges
to > Browse and add more badges

to get you started - I have given you 10 acorns ....have fun

reply to this by scrolling to the bottom and you will see all the smiley faces

Found at the bottom of any page under 'Acorns'.
https://garden.org/special/aco...
You automatically get 5 when you sign up.

And you can 'Manage your Microbadges' from your profile and they are exactly for what you stated "to customize my profile". You can see them on the upper left in a members post. Only a certain number fit but many 'buy' a ton to fancy up their profile page.

And you have to click on the emoticon to insert them into your text. You can click the 'Preview' to see if all is correct before hitting the Finished.

Oh and you can arrange the order of your badges too.

And just to be clear, none of this costs "real" money... Sending you a few acorns so you can build up a stash to reward others for their photos and posts and buying badges (if you want to).

One time this site had an offer where you could use 100 acorns to buy a sample size of agrothrive fertilizer. Or 200 for normal sized bottles.

Oh, now I get it!

Thank you, deepsouth, Calif_Sue, pardalinum and Hamwild—thanks for educating me, and you were so generous to send me some of your acorns. I will definitely buy a few badges—and I'll pay it forward and send acorns to others in the future, too. This is very cool and fun!

And Hamwild, I remember seeing the agri-thrive promotion you mentioned. Have you used that yourself?

I did! I didn't have enough for the full size bottles so I got the samples.

Here's some more acorns for another badge (or a rainy day).