Happy Solstice!

The 2024 new year is coming soon, and with it, I’ll be hitting the 1-year mark of having this blog.  Therefore, for the final, regular (non-weekly-garden) post of the year, I’d like to do a look-back of what I’ve done with this blog over the course of 2023.  When it comes to any sort of hobby, I’m definitely prone to, and enjoy, tabulating the various stuff associated with it.  And so, without further ado:

General Accomplishments

1. I actually started this blog!  I have been thinking about putting something like this together for many years, and this year I actually did it!

2. Granted, website-wise, this start has been pretty bare bones.  I picked a domain name, got a hosting service, picked very nearly the first WordPress theme I came across to skin everything and, aside from the Home page with the blog posting to it, made just one static page, the About page.  I have plans for other pages/features, but I shall not share them here, lest it become crystal clear just how long it usually takes me to go from plans to reality.

3. If anybody was paying very close attention (stats say this would be surprising) they might have noticed that there was some initial flailing on my part with things like how to Categorize and Tag the posts.  As usually happens, I started with a scheme that was more complicated up front than it needed to be.  But yay!  I can go back and edit.  So, I’ve now got all my posts sorted into 4 categories that actually make sense (General Posts, fly-by-posting, Weekly Garden, & SSCSs (stories)).  (::mumbles::…and also now I keep an excel list of the Tags I use so I can retain some consistency for those…::)

4. As a function of that last category, I published a short story to my blog: ‘Because the Desert is a Great, Broad Beast of Memory’.  First published short story!

Blog Content:

Okay, onward to actual content.

First, because I think pretty pictures are pretty, behold the four images I used for seasonal banners to the site.  For the banners, I try to pick images that I think match the aesthetic set by the site’s name, Day Moon – Crow Moon.  No idea if the choices do or can make sense to anybody else.  Just know they’re not completely random.

As for actual posts, over the course of 2023 I’ve put up a total of 126 posts, including this one.  Just 26 of those (including this one) are regular essay-style posts in the ‘General Posts’ category, which maybe doesn’t seem like a lot, until you realize that in 2023 I wrote 26 essays mostly just for fun.  (Junior-high/High-school me would absolutely not have believed that.  Essays are yech!)

Here are the links to my four favorites, in case anybody’s curious.  (In alphabetical order, which, coincidentally, is also reverse-posting order.)

• Annular Eclipse vs Pinhole Camera vs Astronomy is Awesome
• The Combined Power of Disney’s Live-Action Cinderella and The Untamed
• Ode to Geese Feet
• Viewing-Distance from a Disaster

Beyond favorites, I can say that, not including this post, the ‘General Posts’ posts totaled 27,000 words.  They ranged in length from 220 to 3250 words long, with an average post length of 1090 words, and a median post length of 940 words.  Like this:

• Longest:  First Ever (in 30 years) Backpacking Adventure
• Median-length:  Wonderland Art!
• Closest-to-Average-length:  Happy Father’s Day!
• Shortest:  First Ever Post – Happy New Year!

(Of course, the actually shortest post of the year was a fly-by-posting: )

• Fly-by-Posting 2023/10/14 (w/pic)

…Like I said, I like to tabulate things about my hobbies.

Weekly-Garden Content:

Finally, one of the cornerstone pieces of this blog are the Weekly Garden Snapshot posts.  I decided to put up weekly pictures from my garden for a number of reasons.  The simplest, of course, is that a weekly picture from my garden is something I can almost always do.  Even when I go on vacation, I’m rarely gone so long that I can’t get a picture from about the right time to fit in the series.  And I really, really like my garden.  So, a bonus second reason is that it gives me a reason to actually get my butt outside at least once a week to see what’s out there.  I’m the sort of person who talks to their plants; if I actually get outside and look around, I will enjoy myself.  It’s not quite as great as being in the woods, but it is, fundamentally, good.

But, as you’ve probably noticed if you’ve looked at these posts, there’s one other aspect to them that I just think is super interesting.  I’m just always really interested in the passage of time.  For the most part, this manifests in my JUST REALLY WANTING TO KNOW what ____ will be like in, say, 50 years.  But, if I can make myself be patient and methodical, like, by taking pictures of my garden every week for years, then I can at least start to see and play with the patterns in time that I’ve been able to witness.  At the very least, it’s a good reminder that all the beautiful things will come around again.

So, from this year, here are some of my favorite Weekly Garden images:

And here are some of my favorite Seasonal Look-backs:

And finally, considering I did a full post just about my roses, you can probably guess that I’m more partial to those flowers than I ought to be given the combination of my gardening talents plus my local (dry shade everywhere!) growing conditions.  Oh well.  I just am.  So, prettiest rose and favorite rose:

I already voted El Catala the prettiest rose this year.  But honestly my favorite rose is still Viking Queen.  Even though she’s been struggling lately, this is the same rose who was with us at the old apartment, when my girls were little and we’d sit in the deck garden (really huddling in the remaining space not taken up by plants) and blow soap bubbles.  Another rose would have to be pretty darned awesome to top those memories.

Here’s to 2024, fast approaching, and to hopefully many more beautiful gardens to come.