blogging — Page 21

Putting It Out There

May 7, 2014 at 8:33 am by Claudia

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Here’s looking at you. The world looks pretty amazing when it’s reflected in a gazing ball.

Spring is here. Although we had a minor glitch when we had a Frost Advisory last night.

It’s May 7th.

I had to run out and cover a plant I had just put in the ground a few days before. After the Red Sox game ended (12 innings!), there were Don and I, flashlight in hand, throwing a sheet on the plant. Well, not actually throwing a sheet; we artfully arranged it so it covered the plant, but didn’t touch it.

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Big garden bed last week.

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Big garden bed this week: perennials are spreading, growing taller, and you can spy some green on those trees.

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Up in the back forty, some are actually leafing out. Will wonders never cease?

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The tulips are just about to open. My goodness. It’s May. (Do I need to keep saying that?) Apparently, yes. I am still wrestling with the fact that Spring has come so much later this year.

My peonies are emerging from the ground. They bloom, like clockwork, during the first week of June. Will that still hold true this year? I’m wondering.

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The woods are full of vinca; swaths of purple flowers are everywhere.

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The buzz of big, fat bumblebees accompanies me on my walks around the property.

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Waiting for Spring here in Northeast isn’t for sissies. It requires a lot of fortitude and more than a little patience. This year, more than ever, I look for the tiniest signs. It’s getting a little easier to find them lately, but for quite a while there, I had to look very closely indeed.

I almost had to use a magnifying glass.

In other news, I cringe slightly when I share this with you, but here’s the scoop. I added another ad above the content area on the blog. I don’t like the look of it, but it’s necessary right now. I spent a long time on the phone with Dawn yesterday, trying to figure out how to change some CSS coding so that the ad wasn’t right on top of the post title. We finally figured it out, but it’s messed a bit with my post title spacing. Nothing I can’t ignore.

The truth: I need more income from this blog and I don’t kid myself; that will be easier said than done, as this blog isn’t one thing, i.e., a decorating blog or a food blog, it’s a lot of things. It’s a reflection of all my loves, all my passions. I’m perfectly happy with that, indeed, I deliberately fashioned the blog in that way, but the downside is that my kind of blog earns less ad income. So I continually walk a little tightrope here, balancing the need to be honest and real with trying to find more ways to generate an income. I haven’t had coaching work in several months. Jobs of any kind in my neck of the woods aren’t particularly easy to find. We need more money coming in. STAT.

Wouldn’t it be perfect if this blog I put so much work and love into, this place where I write a new post each and every day, could provide me with an income that matches what I might earn working elsewhere? I’m putting it out there into the Universe.

Why not?

(Please don’t think I’m asking you to click on ads. You don’t have to do that and I don’t want you to. Only click on an ad you are honestly interested in. If you visit the blog directly, that is enough. Thanks.)

Happy Wednesday.

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A Late Spring

April 30, 2014 at 8:35 am by Claudia

I’m thinking that Spring is about three weeks behind this year. If I didn’t know what date it was, I would assume it was the beginning, rather than the end, of April. A long, hard winter and a late-in-coming spring. Yesterday? Rain. Today? More rain. I do take comfort in the fact that we will reap the benefits of all that moisture, whether snow or rain, in lushness of growth.

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This is the large garden bed. I took this photo yesterday. Last fall, when I was away in Hartford, a huge maple limb came down in a storm and fell on the garden. It stretched all the way across the middle of the bed.

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You can see the sawdust that still remains – a remnant of all the chainsaw activity the day after the storm. It was late September when I returned home, so I had no idea what plants might have been destroyed because of the damage. This perennial bed has been lovingly established over the past eight years and the thought of losing any of the plants made me very sad.

The good news is it looks like all is well. I can see the beginnings of most everything that was in the path of that limb. Time will tell, but it looks better than I thought it would.

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The hyacinths (mystery bulbs that I found deeply buried in one of the other garden beds) are gorgeous this year.

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My Annabelle hydrangea, ever reliable, is leafing out.

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Sedum Autumn Joy, long established when we moved here, is blessing us with its beauty.

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The lilacs are ready to open. (The blue tarp around our chimney is protecting us from leaks until we can scape together the money to repair it.)

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We’ve been doing a lot of bramble clearing and we have the wounds to prove it. What a pain in the tush – and the arms and the legs! We were clearing some of the brambles that are near the shed when I noticed this young tree, which was about to be overwhelmed by those pesky, thorny branches. I’m happy to say it has been freed. Does anyone know what kind of tree this is? The leaves are the maroon color of a Japanese or Norway Maple, but it is neither. I have a tree book somewhere around here and I’m determined to solve this mystery!

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And the weigela bush (it’s not a tree), like clockwork, has beautiful buds ready to open. I love this bush.

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Aren’t they beautiful?

I spent most of the day on Monday outside, clearing out garden beds, cutting back lavender plants near the kitchen, neatening up the stone edge that surrounds all the beds, pulling weeds.

I am passionate about gardening. I love it all, but I especially love perennial gardening. It takes patience. It’s not an instant garden. But one of the great joys of living here after years and years of apartment living and/or house renting has been the opportunity to create my very own gardens. The only bed that was established when we moved here was right next to the house and that area had only a few hostas and sedums. Everything else I’ve added over time. The beds now stretch from the driveway to the far side of the house, from the chicken wire fence to the shed. I love my gardens and I’m proud of them.

I wrote a post in 2012 called: Why I love Having a Perennial Garden. You might find it interesting.

Gardening, that meditative and peaceful process, takes me to another place where I lose all sense of time, which makes it the perfect activity during this period of mourning. It offers some respite from my grief.

It’s too early to plant seeds – that is at least another week away. But we did plant some wildflower seeds in an area to the left of the shed. I hope they take root. Our plan is to call it Shirley’s Wildflower Garden in honor of my mother. Cross your fingers.

On another, seemingly endless, note: Those of you who subscribe to this blog may have noticed a lack of posts lately. But in reality, except for Friday and Saturday of last week, I have been posting every day. This problem is due to Yahoo and AOL making changes in an effort to stop spam or spoof emails. I subscribe to this blog via Yahoo, AOL and Gmail and the only consistent delivery lately has been through Gmail, though I did get the post via AOL yesterday. I’ll say it again. Bookmark the blog. Visit directly. (Quite frankly, when you visit the blog directly, it helps my ad income.) Or subscribe through Bloglovin’. I’ve seen a few posts on how to fix this problem but the jury’s out as to whether it will work. So I’m not doing anything until I know, for sure, that the problem will be solved and that I’m not creating another problem in the meantime.

I’ve written about this several times but I’m still getting messages from some of you saying you haven’t received my posts lately. I can’t make you bookmark the blog’s URL or subscribe through Bloglovin’ but if you don’t, you probably won’t receive any updates. It’s up to you, my friends. I would sure hate for you to miss anything!

And finally, the winner of a copy of My Boyfriend Barfed in My Handbag…and Other Things You Can’t Ask Martha is Janet in Rochester. Congratulations, Janet! I’m sending you an email.

Happy Wednesday.

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Life’s Too Short to Worry About This Stuff

April 19, 2014 at 9:23 am by Claudia

daffs

In the Life’s Too Short/I Can’t Waste Any Time Worrying About This Stuff Column:

Data Breaches: Every time I turn around lately, I’m on the receiving end of an email or letter informing me that a website or store or utility company I have done business with has been the victim of a ‘data breach.’ That between some date and another date, some nefarious group hacked into the site with the result being that some of my data, i.e., credit card info, name, birthdate, address, might be in the wrong hands.

When this sort of thing first started happening, I felt the usual panic, wondered what to do, wrung my hands, etc. But now? I just shrug my shoulders and shake my head and maybe change my password or maybe ignore the whole thing. If this sounds like an ostrich burying its head in the sand, you might be right. But the fact is, we all provide personal information online or at the cash register. We hope, of course, that that information is secure but there is always the risk that it might not be. In this age of digital everything, personal information is readily accessible – too accessible – but that’s the way of the world nowadays.

The people behind all of this are contemptible, of course. They do bad things that affect innocent people. I think it’s terrible. But, in the end, I can’t go into a panic every time I this happens, because it seems to happen more and more often. I can’t be worrying all the time about identity theft. There’s so much written about all of this – especially on the web – that one can quickly be overwhelmed by it all. I’m not going to be blissfully ignorant, but I refuse to let this crap rule my life.

So I shake my head, shrug my shoulders and move on.

hyacinths

Rules on Blogging: Please stop. Please stop with the ’10 Things That Make a Good Blogger’ kind of posts. Or ‘What Every Blogger Needs to Know.’ Or, even more maddening, ‘How to Coordinate All Your Social Media or When to Schedule Your Pinterest Pins or your Facebook Posts or your Instagram posts” or “How to Use Social Media.” Always with the proviso that you must do these things if you want to be taken seriously. There’s just too much of this kind of ‘expert’ advice out there. And the result is that we lose that individual stamp that is so vital, the thing that makes one person’s blog different from every other blog out there.

I realize, of course, that for many bloggers, their blog is their business. I get it. And I respect that.

Regretfully, at least to me, blogging has changed. What started out as a creative way to share with each other and expand our world, to journal, to share photos, to create, to write – let’s stop for a moment and say that again – to write, has now morphed into an arena where everyone has to have a new project on the blog every day, then has to Tweet or Facebook or Pin and hype the heck out of it. And every stat has to be checked and rechecked and compared to every other blogger’s stats.

If there’s any way to squeeze every ounce of joy out of blogging, that kind of stuff is sure to do it.

The number of bloggers out there has multiplied and multiplied and multiplied some more since I started blogging six years ago. The arena has become much more competitive, with everyone vying for readers, for ad clicks, for a rung on the ladder of ‘blogging success.’ It’s exciting, for sure, this blogging world. And blogging can lead to recognition, to possibilities, to maybe even a book deal. All well and good. Though, as to book deals and blogger hype, I have to raise this question: When did everyone become an ‘Expert?’ The internet has suddenly given everyone a chance to claim the title of Expert. Really? I’m highly suspicious about that one.

Let me say here and now: I don’t claim to be an Expert on anything.

I don’t want to see blogging become the equivalent of a strip mall, where everything is the same and the content is so similar that one could be in any city or town with all of the shops so interchangeable that nothing is really new or fresh or original.

I have to stop myself because there’s SO much I could say about all of this and I will, someday.

Really, in the end, my point is this. I started blogging for the sheer pleasure of it. It brings me joy. Anything that takes that joy and boxes it up and surrounds it with a list of ‘rules’ and things I must do will be summarily tossed out the window.

Life is too short and joy is too hard to come by. It’s too precious to mess with.

Happy Saturday.

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Putting It Out There

A Late Spring

Life’s Too Short to Worry About This Stuff

claudiahillsparks

Lambs Like to Party

A Note

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