Fourth year blogiversary

My first ever blog post was on Sunday, November 18, 2007. It was on a Better Homes & Gardens photo shoot here in Buffalo, actually on my street. Since then, story producer Donna Talley and photographer Andreas Trauttsmansdorff have been back two more times. Andreas even came back to photograph Buffalo gardens for Martha Stewart Living magazine (those photos were never published. Long story, buy me a drink and I'll share it with you).

In the meantime, I've gotten rid of ALL my grass.

I started the blog really so I could promote Garden Walk Buffalo, the largest garden tour in the U.S. It's also been an outlet for sharing garden photos taken on vacations, my own garden projects as well as the National Garden Festival, an annual five-week long series of garden events that culminates with Garden Walk Buffalo.



I've also attended two garden blogger meet-ups, one in Chicago in 2009, and hosted a meet-up here in Buffalo (with Elizabeth Licata of Garden Rant/Gardening While Intoxicated) with 72 garden bloggers and met some really great people that like to share garden information from 23 different states and Canada. I am anticipating going to this year's garden blogger's meet-up in Asheville, NC.

Some blog stats from four years:

• Number of posts:  530 (including this one)
• Top five posts of all time:
  Magic or deception. And what’s the difference?
  Tulip bed time story
  Snowflake Field Guide Part 6 - The Blizzard of '77...
  Have I introduced you to my Garden Fairy friend? 
  National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden
• For the most popular posts this week, see the sidebar under "Popular Posts"
• Most commented on post: 24 - Villandry Garden of Love (but to be fair, I publish this post every Valentines Day)
• Average visitors per day: 93
• Average number of pages viewed each day: 147
• Top three other websites I consistently get traffic from: Paradise Express, Living without Money, Garden Walk Buffalo. But the vast majority of new visitors arrive through Google.
• Top five keywords used to lead people to my blog: Tomato tree, Art of Gardening, Blizzard of 77, Backyard Solutions magazine, and Great Backyards
• Top five countries with visitors, in order: United States, Romania, Canada, United Kingdom and France.
• Browsers used: 46% Explorer, 29% Firefox, 12% Safari, 8% Chrome, others are 1% or less.
• Computers used by visitors: 79% Window PCs, 15% Macintosh, 1% iPad, 1% iPhone.
• Travel in the last four years included: Long Island; Cape Cod; Boston; Washington; New York City, Pittsburgh; Philadelphia; Chicago; Orlando/Disney; the Caribbean, Paris, Alsace-Lorraine, and the Loire Valley of France; Brussels, Antwerp, and Bruges, Belgium; Rome, Italy;  London, England; Edinburgh, Scotland; Amsterdam, Holland; Munich, Frankfort, Berlin and Potsdam in Germany; Salzburg, Austria; Sayulita, Mexico; Athens, Greece; Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa and the Dead Sea in Israel. And Canada (if a couple trips to Ikea counts). Travel posts are listed by country in the sidebar to the right in the "Labels" column.

That last bullet makes me look forward to the next four years!