Thank you for all of your comments. I love reading them, so I've added a Blogger feed for the five most recent comments on the sidebar under Followers. Along with the beginning of the comment, the feed also includes the date added and the name of the author. For simple instructions on how to add the same to your blog, click here.
From Douglas Quenqua in The New York Times:
"According to a 2008 survey by Technorati, which runs a search engine for blogs, only 7.4 million out of the 133 million blogs the company tracks had been updated in the past 120 days. That translates to 95 percent of blogs being essentially abandoned, left to lie fallow on the Web, where they become public remnants of a dream — or at least an ambition — unfulfilled.
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...Not all fallow blogs die from lack of reader interest. Some bloggers find themselves too busy — what with, say, homework and swim practice, or perhaps even housework and parenting. Others graduate to more immediate formats, like Twitter and Facebook. And a few — gasp — actually decide to reclaim some smidgen of personal privacy."
For the full article, click here.
One of the most interesting things I find about writing this blog is the readers it attracts. Without readers, there would be no point to this blog, so thank you very much for following, subscribing, searching, clicking, reading, commenting and linking.
Each month, traffic has grown significantly year-over-year, but not necessarily month-to-month as there is a definite seasonality to the readership (stronger in spring/summer). Using Google Analytics, here are some of the April Traffic statistics:
Top Traffic Sources
1. http://www.google.com/
2. http://www.images.google.com/
3. http://www.yahoo.com/
4. http://www.blogger.com/
5. http://www.aol.com/
6. http://www.gardeninggonewild.com/ (thank you)
7. http://www.sustainable-gardening.com/ (thank you)
8. http://www.images.google.ca/
9. http://www.maydreamsgardens.blogspot.com/ (thank you)
10. http://www.ask.com/
Top Search Keywords
1. raised vegetable beds
2. how to build a sandbox
3. gardening on a hill
4. annabelle hydrangea
5. keeping rabbits out of garden
6. spirea pruning
7. pee gee hydrangea
8. pruning spirea
9. caryopteris pruning
10. spirea bush
Top Content
1. How and When to Prune Caryopteris, Spirea, Butterfly Bush, Pee Gee Hydrangea, Annabelle Hydrangea, Smokebush, Elderberry
2. How to Build Raised Vegetable Beds (on a Slope/Hill)
3. Old Farmer's Almanac: Spring Planting Schedule (April) and Heirloom Seed Sources
4. A Chicken Wire Raised Bed Cover: How to Protect Vegetables from Groundhogs, Rabbits and Squirrels
5. Advice Wanted: How to Keep Rabbits Out of the Garden
6. Planting Early Spring Cool Season Crops and Vegetable Gardening 101
7. Raised Vegetable Beds: Organically Preparing the Soil for Planting
8. How to Prune Pee Gee Hydrangeas and Wisteria: Before Spring Growth Resumes
9. Two Perfect Flowering Plants for Arbors: Betty Corning Clematis and Dortmund Rose
10. The Best of Heirloom Gardener (updated as of March 2009)
I just added a neat new Gadget from Blogger to my blog called Followers. You can see it on the upper right sidebar. Here's how it works:
If you add yourself as a Follower of my blog (or whatever blog uses the Gadget), then Blogger displays your icon as a Follower and includes new Heirloom Gardener posts in your Dashboard's Reading List. Further, it adds a free link directly from my blog via your icon to your About Me entry, so other Heirloom Gardener readers can find out more about you and your blogs.
If you'd like to add the Gadget to your blog, go to your Dashboard, click on Layout, then click on Add a Gadget.
