Today is my 2nd blogiversary. Which is great! I honestly never saw this coming. All of this. All of you. All this fun!

And I thought I would share with you what this blog means to me, because it is more than just words and plants.

A few weeks ago, I was pointed towards a now famous lecture called “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams”, which was the last lecture given by a man named Randy Pausch. Dr. Pausch is rapidly dying of pancreatic cancer. If you have time, I highly recommend you watch the whole 1 hour and 15 minute lecture. If you don’t have time, you can watch the 10 minute Oprah Reader’s Digest version and get the gist.

Watching it makes you catalog your own childhood dreams and I thought I would share mine with you.

1. Wearing pink Converse hightops – Why pink Converse?

• Why have I wanted a pair of pink Converse from the age of 13? 
• Why from 13 until 31 did I not own a pair despite the fact that I always wanted them?
• And why, despite the fact that I only own 4 pairs of shoes, is one of them a pair of pink Converse?

Because my mother said they looked like clown shoes when I asked for them at 13. My mother is a wonderful, practical, part Scottish woman who said you don’t waste money on pink Converse.

But one day I realized that sometimes you do waste money on frippery. Pink Converse are like garden gnomes. They may bring no technical value to the yard but they bring delight and whimsy, which we all need.

Childhood dream accomplished.

2. Owning a convertible – I have many fond memories of convertibles from my childhood. Riding alongside a darling, now long ex-boyfriend who drove a sporty red one, riding in my sister’s making trouble and a number of late night drives looking at the stars with friends who had convertibles.

I finally bought a convertible when the caring, practical people in my life said I should get a minivan. And when that convertible finally died, I bought another. I am the envy of the school pick-up car line and soccer moms. And besides, I have discovered that convertibles are actually very practical.

I know that sometimes, style and substance can co-exist.

Childhood dream accomplished.

3. Become a writer – I shelved this one really early. I wanted to be a writer. I have a 4-year, $40,000 degree in writing. Yet, I had no idea how to become a writer (oddly enough, they don’t teach you this in college).

I wrote a few things and when the rejection letters came I figured that I was not so good at this writing thing. So I gave up. Which you are not suppose to do, but, oddly enough, the electric company does not have a “I am working on becoming the next Great American Writer” line of credit.

And many years later, I started a blog. I knew about running websites. I had lots of websites. Not one of which I cared to show anybody nor could I brag about when I met with my peers. I didn’t think this would be that either. I started a blog because I like to garden and it seemed like a nice place to keep track of a garden.

And then you came and you read what I wrote about my garden. You laughed at what I wrote. So I wrote more. And more. And more.

And I became a writer. And I learned that sometimes dreams happen when you are not looking.

Childhood dream accomplished.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

You helped me do that. You will never know what it means to me and how much I appreciate it.

Do you know what search engine optimization (SEO) is? Do you know that it has an effect on how much traffic and readers your garden blog gets? Do you know what you should pay attention to in order to take advantage of SEO?

I do search engine optimization as part of my job (among many other aspects of internet marketing). And in full disclosure, this blog is not fully optimized, mainly because it is my hobby and I don’t really want to be doing my job while I am doing my hobby. Then it would be work and I work enough as it is. So, using this blog is not always a best practices example.

First, let me explain what SEO is. Search engines have this damn long mathematical equation (called an algorithm) to figure out which pages should come up for any given search done by a person.

How long is this algorithm? Most search engine optimization specialists agree that it contains over 200 elements. That is really, really long. Think about it, every time someone types a search into Google or Yahoo, the search engines look at 200+ things to figure out the best pages to display for the search. That is almost like magic.

What are the 200+ elements? Much like the KFC recipe, the search engines algorithms are a super secret sauce that we mere mortals are not completely privy to. SEO is paying attention to as many of those elements as you can figure out so that your site will come up more in the search engines (and you will then get more visitors and readers). We know a few things that every website owner should pay attention to.

Let’s take a look at those things:

Title Tag - Look up at the blue bar across the top of your IE browser. There are some words there and this is the title tag. With all blogging software, the title tag is pre-programmed, but not always in the best way. Visit your blog and pick a random post and look at the blue bar. Does your site name appear first, rather than your post name? If this is the case, you should change it so that the post name is first in the title tag. It is not hard to do and a quick search will provide detailed instructions on how to do it for your blogging software.

Why should you care about the title tag? Because it is the single most important element in SEO. This is the element, more than any other you can control, the search engines look at to figure out what your page is about. If you can’t do anything else that is in this post, optimize this one thing.

Links - There are two types of links, external links and internal links.

External links are links from other sites to yours. You can think of external links as votes. The more external links (or votes) you have, the more the search engines think that your site is important and popular and they will bring your pages up more often in the results. Trade links with other bloggers, register your site with blog directories and take advantage of linking opportunities as they come up. The caveat on this is that the links must come from quality, related sites and pages. A link from Bob’s House of Pig Pornography will not help your site (unless you have a site about pig porn. And if you do, more power to you. I am ever amazed at the variety of porn on the web. Not that I look, but as a side effect of my job, I run into it more than I like).

Internal links are links inside your site. When you link from one page to another in your site, you are telling a search engine that you feel that page is important. Since all of your pages are important, link to other posts as much as possible. But do it responsibly. There is such thing as overkill. Before you hit that submit button, look at your post and see if you see any words that relate to things you talked about before. Link those words back to the previous posts.

Keywords - This can be the fun part of SEO and frankly the one I am most lax on with this site. Be conscious of the words you are adding to your posts. Your post will only come up for a search if the post contains the words a person is searching for. Double check your post before you publish�� did you use the main words about the post in the post? If you are writing about roses, did you use the word ‘roses’ or did you use the word ‘flower’?

These are just the very basics of SEO. There is much, much more to it than this (and I can’t tell you all of them as then there would be no need for my job). But for the average garden blog owner, doing these few things will help make a huge difference in your traffic and readership.

Just a quick FYI…

I had someone ask me if they could add the Garden Blog Search to their site, so I thought I would put together a page where people could get the code for the search if they wanted to add it to their site.

You can find the code here.

It is setup to go in a sidebar. If anyone wants it for a header, let me know and I will create the code for that too.

As always, if you would like to be added to the Garden Blog Search (and my blog roll), just contact me and let me know.

Has your gardening blog ever been copied without your permission? I would be willing to bet that, on some level, it has. Unfortunately, a lot of the “old fashioned” writers or the general public do not understand that just because a piece of work is published on a website does not mean that these words and pictures are available for public reuse. What this sad fact means is that someone is probably stealing your hard blogging work.

Knowing Your Garden Blogging Rights
You may have noticed that I have a copyright notice at the bottom of my permalink pages that reads that my work is protected by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (or DMCA for short). The DMCA was put in place during the Clinton era in the US to protect works produced in digital format i.e. The Internet. What this means is that the second you click on that “publish” button, your posts and pictures are copyrighted. No one is allowed to copy them without your permission.

Stopping the Stupid People
75% of copyright infringement happens because people are unaware of the law. The law says if you publish it, you own it. But there are some people who think that unless you say “Don’t copy” this means they can. I had this come slapping into my face after reading a Garden Rant post where professional gardening writers were quoted to have said that it was “OK” to take things from gardening blogs. They said, I quote, “These people put it out there and it is there for the taking” Bullshit. These are just stupid people.

Your best bet to stop stupid people is to post a copyright notice on your pages somewhere. If you are uncertain what to write, feel free to copy mine (see, I gave permission) or, if you do wish to share some, you can get a Creative Commons License widget to add to your site. It is like putting a no trespassing sign on private property, but sometimes the obvious is not apparent to stupid people.

Stopping the other 25%
Even more unfortunate than stupid people are greedy people. You may or may not know this, but people can make money from copying your work. Some awful people will copy your work just for that purpose. For those people, you need to get a little tougher. First, send them a nice friendly email letting them know they are copying your work and it is protected under DMCA and they need to take it down TOMORROW. If an email address is not available on their site, you can look it up from their whois for the domain. If that email address comes back as being incorrect, report the domain to InterNIC. The rules say that Whois on a domain must be thruthfully filled out and a domain can be taken away from an owner if the whois is falsified (i.e. they don’t use a real email address)

If the copyright infringer does not remove the material (or worse, gets nasty with you), than it is time to get tough. The really cool thing about DMCA is that it says that anyone who assists someone in copying copyrighted material is also liable for the infringement. This means hosting companies, search engines and advertisers on the site can also be held liable. Needless to say, these companies will drop a website copying other websites like a hot potato. Send DMCA notices (i.e. this site is copying me) to the website’s hosting company, Google, Yahoo, MSN and any advertiser you see listed on the site. State that you are declaring that the other site is in violation of DMCA and that you are requesting that the violating site be dropped immediatly from any relationship with the company you are speaking with.  Be polite though.  Most companies are more than happy to drop a creep.  If nothing else, you will make things difficult for the copycat.

But what if they are doing it offline?
Writing to the publisher of the work will fix this quickly. They do not want to be associated with a plagiarizer either.  It is one of those sacred journalism laws.

When all else fails
Sometimes, you can take all of these steps and it doesn’t stop the person who is copying your site.  You do have the law on your side. If you really want to take it that far, you can talk to a lawyer who specializes in Internet Law who may be able to assist you in suing them.

Is someone copying me?
So how do you find out if someone is copying you? One easy way is to randomly check with Copyscape. This is a service that will compare pages to see how similar they are.

Offline, it is harder. Chances are that you will only find these copycats by chance. But the point is, if you see that your posts or pictures are being used in a way that you did not give permission for, you have rights. Don’t be afraid to employ them.

How do I prove a DMCA violation? 
Take dated screenshots (Hit print screen on your keyboard and paste into Word or a graphics program) of your site and the offending site. Also visit the Wayback Machine and see if there is a record for the way your post looked on the day you posted it. The Wayback Machine is routinly used in DMCA cases to prove copyright infringement online.

But Remember Fair Use
Before you go to topple someone who used a snippet from your blog, you do need to be aware of fair use laws. These are laws that make it okay to use small pieces of a work to build upon them, like if they wanted to comment on, cite or parody a work. Make sure that your work is not being used in a fair use way before you do too much.

Now you know a little more about your gardening blog rights. Use them to protect your work because your work deserves to be protected.  For more information on your rights as a web publisher, visit ChillingEffects.org.

As you guys may or may not know, I make my actual living by helping people figure out how to make their sites better (no, I am not a web designer). One of the ways that I do that is to look at how well a site does in search engines, which isn’t always easy as there are literally millions of sites listed in search engines. Being listed well can be frustrating for a website owner. It is kind of along the lines of that plant you really, really want that croaks dead as dead every winter, no matter what you do. Search engines can be like that.

And the frustration level does not stop there. Having millions of sites to choose from makes things frustrating for people searching too. Think about the last few times you tried to find the answer to a question. Did you find it right away? Did it take you a few tries? Did you find it at all? I am willing to bet you don’t always find exactly what you needed. It is because of all those damn extra websites.  Who the hell needs a website on dancing hamsters or iphone blenders anyway?  Well, maybe we do need them.  They are pretty damn funny when you are drunk.

Anyhoo, wouldn’t it be nice to search just gardening blogs for the answer to your gardening questions? Hundreds of gardening tips and tricks are tucked away on our blogs and we just need to be able to get at them.

And so, the clever and only somewhat not-evil people over at Google came up with Custom Search… Er… Scratch that. It is now Co-Op search… Beta. Okay, so they are still working on the name and some bugs, but they are getting there.

I made a Google Co-Op search that will search only gardening blogs, well at least the gardening blogs on my blog roll (adding new sites any time someone lets me know they want to be added).

The really cool thing about the big G is that they add new pages to their listing like lightening, Speedy Gonzalez fast. All the words the gardening blogosphere has produced is now at your fingertips. You just have to search. You can also add it to you own blog, if you would like.

By the way, this is different from Mr. Brown Thumb’s Gardening Search. His includes many Gardening related sites (like those University Extension Services you are suppose to talk to but never do). His is very helpful as well.  But mine is only for the gardening blogosphere.

The only downfall is that there are some ads. Can’t get rid of those unless I cough up $100 to Google. I don’t make that much from this blog (but donations are always appreciated and well spent on lovely gardening toys and plants). Just think of them as like the commercials on your TV, you don’t need to really look at them. You just have to find what you are looking for.

Whew…  Moving anything tends to suck, but moving a blog is, IMHO, right up there with moving to a new house or moving a cactus.

Well, this is it, I am done with good old Blogger.  To tell the truth, I knew I needed to move this blog a few months ago but I knew that it was going to be a big job so, I did what any human being would do, I procrastinated.  If there is anything that I have learned in my relatively short life, it is that procrastination only lasts until the unpleasant task you are avoiding become less unpleasant than the situation you are currently in.  It had finally gotten to the point when moving 319 pages BY HAND from one system to another was easier than dealing with Blogger for ONE MORE DAY.  That says alot about how difficult Blogger has gotten.

I have been modifying Wordpress for my other sites and clients for about a year now.  I was thoroughly impressed with how easy it was to manipulate and add on to.

Probably about half of you saw I was building a new blog for the past few weeks (Thank you, Technorati Tattle Tale).  I want to make a shout out to Patrick at Bifurcated Carrots  for alerting me to the Technorati issue and Kathy at Cold Climate Gardening for all her great Wordpress tips.

You may notice that the comments are missing from the old posts.  Never fear, I will be slowly adding those back in over the next few weeks.  The fact of the matter is that my posts are only are half complete without all of the comments you guys leave.  Thanks to everybody who stops by.  Hopefully we will all enjoy this new format for This Garden Is Illegal.

I don’t think that I have ever actualy participated in an honest to goodness meme on his blog. But Adekun tagged me, so I think I will take part.

This is the Seven Random Things Meme. I list 7 things about me and then tag seven other garden blogs to do the same. Here we go:

1. The very first thing I remember growing in a garden is green beans.
2. My first garden that belonged to me (and not my parents) was located at a house near the corner of Euclid Avenue and E. Rochelle St. in Cincinnati, OH. Nothing I planted at that house remains there today.
3. My favorite annual is a snapdragon because I can make them talk.
4. I can’t keep cacti alive to save my life.
5. My least favorite decorative flower/plant is a rodedendrum. Ugg.
6. My cat, Sicily, was rescued from a plant nursery. I was plant shopping with a friend when the cat scared her. The girl behind the counter said that her father was going to shoot the cat and the cat came home with me, along with a rose scented geranium and a frog shaped pot.
7. I don’t ever want a big garden. I can barely keep up with this postage stamp one, let alone something bigger.

That’s seven.

Okay, I am picking 7 blogs from my blog list and the are:

A Bumblebee Garden
Dirt Sun Rain
A Study in Contrasts
Cincinnati Cape Cod
wolfie and the sneak
Yard Piddling
Tea and Margaritas in My Garden

I think that is all. I am off to go tag them all.

A little over a year ago, I posted my now infamous Flower Quiz. What started out as a fun little thing for my fun and pleasure turned into a URL that went round the world. I have watched that URL bounce around the net like a caffinated child, and with it came lots of people to this blog.

Recently, I had a request from one of those visitors as to posting the various types of flowers you could possibly be and what they mean. So, here is that list:

Canada Thistle - You are a mean spirited, ornery cuss. People try to get rid of you and you just keep coming back.

Canna - You stand up for what you believe in, even if it gets in the way of what other people think. You are proud of yourself and your accomplishments and you enjoy letting people know that.

Daffodil - You have a sunny disposition and are normally one of the first to show up for the party. You don’t need too much attention from the host once you get there as you are more than capable of making yourself seen and heard.

Daisy - You are just a sweet person. When a friend needs a shoulder to cry on, you are happy to offer yours with a box of tissues as well. Once in awhile, you wish you could be a little more dramatic but then sensibility sets back in and you know that you are perfect the way you are.

Geranium - You are one determined individual. You need nobody and like to let people know that. But this also means that often you are misunderstood. Once people get to know you, they come to understand that you are the most loyal friend a person can have.

Echinacea - You are a health conscious person, both your health and the health of others. You know all about the health benefits and dangers of the world around you.

Foxglove - You really want to be a good person, but you have this little mischievous streak that seems to get in the way. Deep down you mean well, but you are just so good at being just a little bit bad.

Hydrangea - You are just a little bit of a show off and like to prove just what you can do. Every time someone double-dog-dared you, you proved that not only could you do it, but you could do it with style.

Iris - You are a very sensual person. You like to experience all the sights, smells, tastes and textures the world has to offer. Ordinary be damned, because you want to do it all.

Lily - Your artistic expression tends to show up in flamboyant bursts. When you are feeling creative, it consumes your every thought and action. But just as quickly as the muse shows up, it leaves you and you are back to your relatively normal self.

Morning Glory - Dedicated is one word for you. You have a tendency to overwhelm other people occasionally with your enthusiasm for life.

Nasturtium - You are more than what you seem. Outwardly, you are a confident person with just a little bit of a temper. Inwardly, you are someone who needs some serious TLC and attention.

Nigella - Many people think you are just a little bit odd, but you consider yourself just a little eccentric. You find new experiences exciting and fulfilling.

Orchid - Demand is a word that was invented for you. You are an artist and you need to be treated like the queen you know you are. You come first and so you should because you have some fantastic talents.

Petunia - You are a tried and trusted friend who will be there for your friends when they need you. But you have a tendency to be nervous about doing things that go against the norm.

Poppy - Drama is a word you have perfected. If there is a center of attention, you want to be there. But your flair for the dramatic also makes you a popular invite to get togethers as you will always make things interesting.

Rose - Refined and proper, you know that everything has its place and that its place is where you think it should be. You don’t have much tolerance for tom-foolery and will turn your nose up at the type of people who waste their time on foolish things.

Snapdragon - Mischief is your middle name, but your first is friend. You are quite the prankster that loves to make other people laugh.

Sunflower - When your friends think smile, they think of you. There is not a day that goes by that you can’t find something good about the world and your fellow human.

Violet - You have a shy personality. You tend to hesitate before trying new things or meeting new people. But once people get to know you, you open up and show the world what you are really all about.

Yucca - You are so reliable that you are there for a friend before they even know they needed help. But sometimes your uncanny knack for knowing when to help makes you a bit of a busy-body.

So, I have to ask, What flower are you?

I have come to think of gardening blogs alot like the plants in my garden. Every year there is a crop of them and they are all beautiful. I enjoy visiting them and get a nice feeling when I do. But then the winter comes and the gardening blogs all shut down for the season (except in Australia. Those go into high gear).

The gardening blogs lie dormant. There may be a stirring or two and perhaps a few are evergreen, so to speak.

Then spring comes again and it is time to take a walk around the gardening blogs. And much like the first few trips around the garden itself in early spring, you realize that a few of the beautiful things you visited last year have not come back. You have a blogroll that has more than a few abandoned blogs.

People abandoned blogs for a multitude of reasons. Despite what it looks like, blogs are not easy to keep up. It can be hard to find something to write about or even to find the time to write about something. Sometimes people mean to write but they just never get around to it.

Whatever the reason, it is nothing to blame someone for. Life goes on. Much like a flower in the garden is momentarily mourned and then replaced by the next pretty thing, so it goes with blogs.

Which means that I must spend some time cleaning out my blogroll. Fortunately, garden blogs, unlike plants, have a date last posted to let me know if they are still there or not.

I guess what I am trying to say is that if you have a garden blog that you would like for me to add to my blogroll, feel free to drop the URL here. I will be out sussing for new ones on my own as well. And to those who have been to busy to post, I just want to say… I understand. But please understand if I have removed you from my blogroll because of this.

Being in the industry of internet marketing, I know that stuff like this happens. You are just innocently having some fun, writing a few words, a few people come to read it and *BAM* the next thing you know people start sending you free stuff. So I knew that this was possible. So I know that companies do it. I even know why companies, which I could explain, but that is a post for another kind of blog.

I just didn’t think it would be happen to me.

But a few weeks ago a gentleman contacted me. He would send me an urban composter if I agreed to talk about it on my blog. That was it. No strings. No false testimony necessary. I said sure and then promptly forgot about it. Until today when FedEx left two HUGE boxes on my porch which made it impossible for me open my front door.

I opened them and removed the un-assembled contents. Hey, guys. For future reference “DIRECTIONS WOULD BE NICE”. No directions, no picture, not a single clue as to how to put this puppy together. Fortunately, I have a clever husband and, due mostly to the fact that he is male and wouldn’t have read the directions anyway, he was able to put it together. I think he put it together. We ended up with four extra pieces that I have no clue where they go. Hopefully, they weren’t important.

We also had to Crisco the lip of the two sides of the barrel. Due to the fact that this is suppose to be a near watertight container, it is a very tight fit. Even after we greased it, there was alot of tugging and grunting to get the barrel to lock.

Other than that small detail, the composter is pretty impressive. It is heavy and solid. Definitely made to withstand some pretty harsh weather outdoors.

I’ll report back in a few weeks on how the thing actually performs. I’ll take free stuff anytime and I will write about it if it is garden related. But I promise that I will be honest about it.