31.12. Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to you! Tonight I have been blogging for exactly one year! When I signed up for this blog, New Year’s Eve one year ago, I wasn’t so sure I was going to have much to write about….hmmm, well, I guess I had, since this is post number 120! And I wasn’t sure anyone was going to read what I wrote, if I ever got around to write anything at all – guess I didn’t have to worry about that either, my 120 posts have been read over 5.400 times!

I wanted to write about things dear to me, so naturally my garden and my cat have been frequent topics, but I have had a few rants about this that and the other too, perhaps not so much a rant, more me being a bit philosophical, but some of those posts have been surprisingly popular, like this one, called WOMEN’S PREROGATIVES or this one, HALF FULL OR HALF EMPTY Another of my posts that scores surprisingly high on the visitor statistics is the one I wrote about THE PROPHET’S MOSQUE I also made a post about a book called ‘The land of painted caves’ by Jean M. Auel, and I made a movie of the augmented reality symbol on the cover of the book, and how to view it on your computer. The movie is also on YouTube, and per today, that movie has been viewed 3.517 times. I guess I wasn’t the only one who struggled getting the AR to work! But the absolute most visited post of mine is the one I wrote about when MY CAT WENT MISSING and I have many comments on that page from people who have experienced the same. Funnily enough, one other post that has been frequently visited is the post I wrote about RED LILY BEETLES I guess as a gardener I can sympathise with all of you who probably have been looking for some advice to get rid of those dreadful little blighters!

That takes me nicely over to next subject; what you readers have been looking for when ending up on my blog. As most of you come here via a search engine, I can see what you have used as search words from my statistics – yes, I know it is a bit nerdy to look at that, but I can’t help it, I think it is quite interesting at times, to see what people have searched for that made them end up on my blog! Here are a few search terms people have used to end up on my blog in 2011:

-meet ayla (that’s the book I wrote about)

-sarcococca situation (yes, I have mentioned sarcococcas several times)

-retractable courtyard canopies (this is probably because of my post about the Prophet’s Mosque)

-how to make chicken korma a bit spicier (yep, I have a wonderful recipe, I spice it up a lot more than your usual take-away :-) )

-a cat that looks like tabby but its not with big ears (not sure about this one, but it made me smile!)

-my cats ears have a little flap (made me smile even more! I have NOT written about flappy ears!)

-cat with swirls (yes, I have written about tabby cats, as mine is a tabby, with swirls)

-happy tabby (probably my Happy Birthday Cat post from November)

-best cat to own (nope, not written about that)

-european cats ships (definitely not written about that!)

This was just a few examples I have saved, I still find it amazing that people actually find my blog between the millions of other blogs out there! And I must admit it does matter to me that someone actually read what I write, wouldn’t be the same if no one read it :-) So thank you, all of you that visited my blog in 2011, and made this blog possible, without you the readers my blog would not have been here past the first few weeks of starting it!

I haven’t got any gardening photos for you tonight, the weather is pretty grim here in London today, but I have some fireworks photos for you to end 2011 with, and they are actually taken in my garden. I took these photos in August, when there was a concert in the local park nearby and they finished with a spectacular firework which I could see from my garden. The music accompanying the photos is the Champagne Galop, Op. 14 by Hans Christian Lumbye, enjoy!