Twenty Years of Blogging

Today is the 20th anniversary of my starting this blog.

That’s right, the first post was September 27, 2004.

Just so you don’t have to click down through all the posts of the last 20 years to read that first post, I’ve copied it here.

My First Blog Post

September 27, 2004

“I’ve just resurrected this blog. Based on when I last posted, it seems I have a lot of catch up to do to provide information. Let’s just fast forward. Spring came, then summer, then fall, then winter, then spring, then summer. Now summer is over. We had a good summer, rain when we needed it and no days over 90 degrees. But, the last few weeks have been dry and the grass has gone dormant. The perennials are drying up, too. It would be a very dusty job to try to attempt any garden clean up now. I’ll just have to wait for some rain. In the meantime, I do intend to take some cuttings from the ivy hanging from the baskets on the front porch. It did quite well this summer, so I’ll have to try that again next year. I already have cuttings from my sister’s garden, including some Swedish ivy and coleus, sitting in a vase, ready to be rooted. I also plan to bring in my black elephant ear this year; it doesn’t create the same kind of bulb as the ‘regular’ elephant ears, so that’s the only way I can think to keep it through the winter. I just hope I don’t unleash some six-legged critters in my house. I don’t need that. Inside, I’ve moved my terrarium over by a north window, but haven’t yet put any plants in it. I was going to get some plants at Frank’s but never saw any I liked or thought would stay small enough. By the way, Frank’s is going out of business and have started their ‘sell it all to the walls’ sale. I stopped by yesterday but was not impressed. They had items “red tagged” with clearance prices, which appeared to be the same as the regular price. They’ll have to do better than that. It was not too busy, either, so I think others are waiting, like I am, for them to get a bit more aggressive with their pricing. I will miss them in January when it is time to buy seeds, since they always had them for half-price!

Due to the dry weather, I was able to skip mowing the lawn this week. Darn shame, too, since I have a new mower that I have only used once so far. I was looking forward to doing it, but there is nothing to mow right now (except some grass around one tree that I did water last week, but it will just have to wait.

(I’m a novice at blogging… just figured out how to add pictures. Cool! (Note added 09/27/2024, that picture was actually on a second post and is included above, again, so you don’t have to scroll all the way down to see what the picture was.)

May Dreams Gardens… because we plant and dream in May for a successful garden each year!”

It Was a Slow Start

In that first post, I wrote that I had resurrected this blog because I did a tiny bit of blogging before, but ended up deleting those posts, which admittedly was a dumb thing to do, historically. And no, those posts are probably not to be found on the internet archives anywhere. I know I wrote them using Blogger, but I have no idea what I called that blog. My best guess is I wrote them in 2002.

The second post from that same day was that picture of Stargazer lilies. (See above.)

Then I posted another four times in 2004 before losing interest.

In 2005, I apparently decided to give blog writing another shot and write two more blog posts, both in the spring.

Then along came 2006. I started posting on January 11th and here we are with post number…

3,271.

I Learned Something from My First Post

I didn’t realize it was 20 years ago that I took cuttings from my sister’s Swedish ivy. That plant languished in a pot in my sunroom for 20 years!!! I kept meaning to take it outside for the summer, but one year slipped to the next year, to the following year, etc.. until… this spring. I finally did it. I took the last few barely alive stems, stuck them in a hanging basket outside, and wished them well. And they did well! Now I have a big pot of Swedish Ivy again, which I will take cuttings from to bring inside for the winter. But I won’t wait another 20 years to take them back outside again. I’ll try to make it an annual event.

And Now Some Math….

Average number of posts per year. 164

Number of words. Guessing around 300 words on average per post? I don’t really know if that is high or low, but 3,271 x 300 = 981,300

(If there are an average of 70,000 – 100,000 words in a novel, that would be between 10 to 14 novels.)

Approved comments: 43,289. (Spam comments deleted automatically? Countless!)

Other Measures of Blogging

There are other ways to measure a blog, other than with post counts, word counts, and comment counts. These include:

The number of new friends met through blogging. (Countless,)

The number of unexpected opportunities that came my way to write and speak about gardening. (Also, countless.)

Plus, five gardening humor books and two children’s books I published based on posts from this blog.

All because I put my hands to the keyboard and decided to tell the world about my garden and gardening life.

Twenty years ago.