Another year, another blog look-back (here are the look-backs from the previous years: 2024, 2023).

This year things have been a bit thin around here on daymooncrowmoon.com (which is particularly too bad, considering that this year’s Serial Steam-of-Consciousness Story, ‘Those Monsters We Have Dreamed About’ is my favorite of the SSCSs posted so far, and then I wasn’t around much with proper posts to give it much company, alas, alack!).

This thinness would be easy to blame on the fact that we had three deaths in the family this year (and a near brush with a fourth, among other things), but actually the year started out difficult before any of that happened, with a push for a really big project at work that started in mid-2025 and ended in February (mostly), and a push to prepare for my 2^nd-degree black-belt testing that happened in March.  Those were two very worth-while and successful efforts, but also exhausting, and they really underlined the fact that I’ve only got so much push energy to go around…and then family emergencies (and work insanity) meant that more was simply required, whether I had any reserves left or no.

Which is all extremely frustrating of course.  In my head I’m a very ambitious person, but health and energy levels do bring me up quite short (also the fact that I tend to be over ambitious, and spread myself across lots of different things—that has been true always).

Anyway, that means this year’s look-back will be somewhat abbreviated from past years, both due to there being less blog/website happenings to cover, and to the fact that I am still somewhat…adrift.  So, drifting onward:

General Accomplishments:

This is my third year with daymooncrowmoon.com, and I very much did have plans for improvements.  Not amazing or grand plans, but they existed.  …And, hopefully you’ll get to read about them this time next year.

This year, the website is as it was, and that will just have to be enough for now.

I did still post four new pretty seasonal site banners (even if they weren’t changed out quite as timely as I would have liked).  See!  Here they are:

Blog Content:

As always, my blog content this year was divided into 4 main categories:

• Weekly Garden Snapshots – 51 posts so far this year, of course, because that’s how calendars work.  (And I’ll show you my favorites in the next section, below.)
• Serial-Stream-of-Consciousness installments – 35 posts for ‘Those Monsters We Have Dreamed About’, + 1 sneak-peek for next year’s story.  (You can read my ramblings about this year’s story here.)
• Fly-by Postings – 13 posts this year.
• General Blog Posts – 12 posts this year, including this one.

That all adds up to a total of 112 posts, but of course only those last two categories are the real meat of what I consider blog content.  My garden snapshots are made up of pretty pictures and almost no words (and especially fewer words now this year than the previous years).  And my SSCS installments make up a story that in the practical sense could be presented anywhere, it just happens to be presented on this website.

But, the fly-by postings and the general blog posts are meant and created for this site, and if I were to stop posting those altogether then I really wouldn’t be able to call this a blog anymore.  Adding those together, this year there were 25, just over half of what I put up last year, and if you want to see how those numbers stack up year-to-year, you can see that in my 2025 Writing Roundup post, here.

So, 25 blog posts, only 12 categorized as regular-style posts, so yes, a bit thin this year.  In past years, I’ve listed my favorite posts, and the posts that are shortest, longest, and most average-length for the year (because word-count feels like points, and I like counting my points!).  This year, two of the general posts (here and here) are so brief as to rightly be lumped with the fly-by posts, and so this year I give you:

Posts by Word-Count:

• (3^rd) shortest: Family Karaoke Night (68 words)
• Nearest-average: New Cross-stitch Completed: The Stargazer (1310 words)
• Longest: Writing Beginnings and Endings * (2390 words)

Favorite Posts:

• fly-by-posting: 2025/05/09 (w/pic)
• Hello From [Various]
• Writing Beginnings and Endings *

Interestingly, the thing that’s missing from the above lists isn’t really to do with variety or volume, but rather joyful, ridiculous enthusiasm (e.g., like this one from last year’s favorites).  I very, very much hope I shall have some joyful and ridiculously enthusiastic posts to share with you all in 2026.

Weekly Garden Content:

Reviewing my weekly garden snapshot images for 2025 to pick out my favorites, I’m struck by the fact that, though the series exists for a number of reasons, one of those reasons is my continual effort to bring myself into better balance with my local environment.  I’ve lived in Colorado for over twenty years, and though it undeniably is my home, there will always be the tension of comparing it to the place (and time, probably) where I was raised, in western Montana.  When I came here, I had made a conscious choice to stay in the Rocky Mountains, but of course many things are different.  The climate is different.  And the urban sprawl is very different.  I feel most myself when my feet are on the ground, the dirt, and that’s true both here and in Montana.  The part of myself that is defined by place is anchored by the earth, and so I reach for the things that remind me of the earth’s beauty, right here, so that that anchor will hold me.  As I write this, I look out the window, late December and it’s sunny, over 70 degrees outside.  I’ve been so tired for so long, and the winter of rest doesn’t look like it’ll be coming.  So, I have to touch the ground, and reach for my anchors.  Here they are, the bounty and beauty of the earth, right here.

So, onward! to hopefully a brighter, more bustling (and enthusiastic!) 2026!