What’s Up With Ilona’s Garden?

I was busy with traveling and helping out various members of my family all summer. The result is that my garden looks like crap (excuse the language, but it really looks worse than neglected and weedy). I swear if it was up to my husband we would be redneck, trailer trash. I mean the stereotype, not actual people who live in trailer parks, which often look quite nice and neat, or rednecks, which aren’t as silly as they are cracked up to be for comedians to mine for their routines 🙂

Let’s just say he would fit the stereotype if I let him. Or else shave everything down to the grass and 5 scraggled trees we started out with. Maybe. Because he doesn’t like to mow very much.

Anyway, besides the neglected garden, I also had neglected sites. I have no one to blame for that!

I did manage to write a post for Ilona’s Garden Journal, Reviewing 2014 Growing Season, already. Yes, it is the end of the season for me, I will be off again, unable to care for the garden.

I have lots of plans for garden writing during that time, however, so despite a single post of Ohio Fall Showcase being the sole fruit of the late summer there will be posts and pages on Ilona’s Garden. I blame the fact that I miscalculated how little time one has for writing when running after an active two year old! Especially when I no longer can run.

Sorry for all the shame and blame, it is indicative of the differential between my well intentioned plans and the realities of my choices. I shouldn’t call these reasons “blame”, they are simply explanations. Old verbal habits that I probably should remedy from my conversation!

But I intend to write LOTS in early October. Then piece out the publishing of it, so there is less of the feat and famine which tends to characterize my blogging schedule (hoped for scheduling, instead of the writing when the muse hits me, or I can carve time away from an avalanche of demands!)

So, that is the update. Thankfully I wrote a newsletter for this month and can resume the monthly schedule here on out. Read this month’s chat, here. Or better yet sign up… I should put a link to that somewhere on here….

Heard The News About Squidoo?

In August it was announced that Squidoo had sold its content to Hubpages, a similar type of site (but with significant differences).

Squids were in a hubbub, and given opportunity to choose an early opt-in or take their content elsewhere, the remainder of the members work gets transferred automatically, and the whole process is slated to be finalized by October 2014.

I decided to do early opt-in since I had already opened an account, see Ilona1 on Hubpages. That allowed me to buffer the shock a bit, since I had become aware of the difference in writing between the two sites. Still, the actual changes and work involved are more than anticipated.

Hubpages was faring better than Squidoo in its relationship with Google changes, and its traffic was better. I’d say not everyone in the HP community is completely happy with absorbing Squidoo writers into their midst.

I had not been as active a member at Hubpages, and still feeling my way. Money-wise, it is unclear whether the lenses will continue to make the income that they did on Squidoo. I am trying to adjust to the style changes of Hubpages, although at this point I might say I like it better than I did and might even now prefer the format to the old Squidoo.

After the initial spurt of work at recreating and customizing the old writing into the new format of HP, I do think I will concentrate on writing for and building my own sites. It was to aid my sites that I first forayed into Squidoo, and then got totally sucked in and neglected my own patch of the web.

Hoping I learned my lesson!

 

Long, Cold Winter Ahead?

My blogger friends have noticed ants working extra hard this summer, the early onset of wintery weather has already been arriving in parts of the USA (South Dakota, Nebraska, and Colorado).

I personally am expecting a more severe than usual winter, although I hope it doesn’t hang on as long as the 13/14 winter did.
In my area, the Ohio valley, the Farmer’s Almanac predicts

Winter will be much colder than normal, with the coldest periods in mid-December, from late December through early January, and in mid- and late January

It looks like we need to get ready for it, possibly getting winter preparation chores done earlier than usual and making sure there is plenty of firewood and generators are in order.