This morning I woke up and found that there was frost on the ground in spots. Light, barely shimmering, but frost never the less. And this is the sign that my garden is done for the year. It needs a rest. And then I realized that I had not posted here in over two weeks, and worse, I really did not want to.  It’s not to say that I don’t  ever want to post again.  I do love you guys.  But like my plants, I need a rest.

I think I know now why trees lose their leaves.  Oh sure, those scientific types might say it has something to do with leaf senescence and days getting shorter, but I know deep down inside that the REAL reason trees lose their leaves is because they are tired.

All summer long, its work, work, work.  Providing shade for this person, looking pretty for that person.  And heaven forbid that you be a fruit tree and be expected to provide fruit on top of it all.  I mean really, when does a tree get a break?  So those deciduous trees, you know the ones that have figured out that all work and no sleep creates a prickly personality (which explains a lot about many evergreens), take a break and rest.

What I am saying here is that I am going to take a page from their book.  I love gardening.  I now work, play, eat, sleep gardening.  Which is great.  Don’t get me wrong.  I don’t envy you gardeners that have to go to a real job every day (Sure, I get paid, but I still have a hard time believing that it is a real job). But I am a bit weary. My garden needs a rest and I need to roll it back a bit.

Last year this happened too, but I worried some of you when I just stopped.  So this is my notice.  This is my first frost to you.  I will be back – I promise.  I am planted in fertile soil after all and tended to by those who love me with tender, loving care.   I might even pop my head up mid-winter if something gardening related peaks my interest.  But until then, I hope you and your gardens rest well too.

Oh, I have been a bad, bad blogger lately, not posting much. Too much to do and too little time. Tomatoes to be planted, flower beds to be mulched. Then there are the half dozen projects I have been meaning to do for the past… oh… 5 or 6 years now.

Like the Grass Couch. I have had a spot picked out for years now, a key focal point in my back yard, in fact. Every year, I vow that I will get too it. But by the time the beds are all cleaned up and the veggie garden is all planted, well, I just want to take a break. Then it is too hot. Then it is too cold. Then, just like the year before a year has gone by with no very hip grass couch appearing in my yard.

Of course there is a never ending line of flower beds that I would love to put in. I do make progress every year in my eventual goal (and my husband’s hope) that I turn every bit of lawn into a flower bed but it will be a long, long process.

And if it is not time standing in my way, it is money. One of these days I will win a small lottery (all I need is a small lottery, say a million or so, it is not too much to ask) and I will build a greenhouse in the back yard.

Almost every gardener I know has this problem. Time and money are like evil worms that work against the fruits of our labors. Unfortunately, I have no magic cure for the issue of time. But, for one lucky person out there, I can help out with the money part. Home Depot has generously offered to give one of my readers a $100 gift card to help them start (or finish) their gardening project. You just need to tell me what that gardening project is. I will choose 5 and post those projects on my blog and you all will be able to vote for the one that wins.

Click here to enter and tell me what Gardening Project you would like to complete!

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This giveaway is sponsored in part by Home Depot Garden Club. Visit www.homedepotgardenclub.com and join The Home Depot Garden Club to get exclusive coupons and tips, and DIY advice on gardening, lawn care, landscaping and outdoor living projects.

It is a half past a few days after the first of the year. Most of the United States has created one of 3 resolutions, lose weight, get organized, get laid… erm… I mean find Mr./Mrs. Right. But us gardeners? We scoff at such paltry goals. We have grander plans, plans that involve taking over the world!!! Wa-ha-ha-ha!!!

Oh, sorry, had an Animaniacs moment there.

So maybe we don’t dream of taking over the world, but we do dream of taking over the earth, at least the earth contained in our garden. How do I know this (other than driving impulses that direct me now)? The Great Google told me of course. Google Trends tells us all.

What!?!? You have never heard of Google Trends? Oh yeah, I forget that the rest of the world is not internet addicts. But still, Google Trends can be fun for your average web surfer for at least a few minutes.

So let’s start with this little world, the world of garden blogging. So what do we find out from Google Trends about garden blogs? Apparently, they are much more popular in Singapore and Malaysia than here in the US. We Yanks did not really discover garden blogs until 2007. Prior to that, not enough people searched for a garden blog to even register to Google.

Now the term “gardening” shows us some really interesting things. Mainly that once the blush of Christmaka has worn off, we gardeners turn into gardening fiends and we don’t slow down until April. This reveals what we already know. We suffer from cabin fever on cocaine and we turn to the internet for our winter fix. But once the sun shines and sprouts burst, we abandon our web dealers and go for the real thing. If you remember my article on seed catalogs, this trend plays into the reason why you start getting seed catalogs in December. The seed selling world just wants to whip you up into a fine frenzy so they can make more money.

But Hanna, you say, the trend of “gardening” is going down. Obviously this proves what we always said about the decline of gardening. Whose this “we”, kimosabi?

Before you write long diatribes on the end of gardening as we know it, let me show you a few other trends:

• Vegetable Gardening
• Grow Tomatoes
• Grow Basil

There is not necessarily having less gardening, but rather we have gotten more sophisticated in how we search.

An interesting side bar is that herbs get a double spike rather than the single spring spike of search traffic. It seems that the one thing people feel they can’t live without from their garden are those tasty tidbits. When faced with the prospect of having to take a second mortgage on their house so that they can enjoy fresh herbs, it seems that they turn the internet to see how they can stave off this harrowing prospect.

So here we stand on the edge of the gardening season for a new era. The Internet Gardening Season. Gather your catalogs close and read up on all you want to do while you wait for the sun to return.

I think that the #2 and #3 questions I get about my blog are “Do you make money with your garden blog?” and “How much money do you make with your gardening blog?” For the record, the #1 question is “Is your garden really illegal?”

So, the answer to the money questions is yes and about $5 a day (all types of advertising I do included). $5 is not a ton of money, but it pays the hosting bills and leaves enough left over to buy a few more plants, which is really the only reason I see for profiting from garden blogging anyway.

In the blogging world, there are two camps when it comes to advertising. There are those who believe that the web should be free and pure and unsullied by material trappings (kind of like Buddhist monks, except without the orange robes and chanting) and then there are people who need to pay bills and understand that the saying says “the LOVE of money is the root of all evil.” Money itself is just how we keep the hosting and plant bills paid.

When it comes to making money from a gardening blog, you have a few options. And, for the record, these are listed in the order of how much of a percentage of the profit they make from this website.

Private advertising - I get approached a lot for private advertising. I consider this to be anything from receiving free product to (honestly) review to a one on one deal to add a small blurb to a partcular page. Garden bloggers probably miss out on this income more than any other simply because their site lacks a Contact Form. If people can’t contact you, they can’t offer to give you money or free things.

AdSense - AdSense is a nifty little program from Google that allows you to add a little bit of code to the pages of your site and they will display ads that are related to the topic of the page. You get paid a percentage of each click. Pretty darn handy for people who don’t want to fuss much.

I have one tip for AdSense. Less is more. I know from experience on this site that I make more money with less ads on the page than I did with more ads on the page. Just keep it in mind. And don’t cheat by clicking on your own ad. They can tell that you cheat.

Affiliate advertising - There are several programs on the web where you can sign your website up, pick a few ads and then you can add those ads to your site. If someone clicks on those ads and buys something, you get a commission on the sale.  Some of the bigger companies are Commision Junction, Performics, Amazon and LinkShare.

These are the primary ways I make money on this blog but there are other ways. I know many bloggers participate in the BlogHer advertising network, text-link-ads.com, paid blog posts and other types of advertising. If you see an unfamiliar type of advertising on another blogger’s website that you would like to try, ask them about it (provided they have a contact form).

Can you go overboard with advertising? Frankly, yes. You need to take a long hard look at why you want to make money on your gardening blog. Could I make more on this blog? Yes (and for the record I make much more than $5 a day on other websites I own). Can you make a living off of a blog? Yes, I know several people who do (though not in this industry). Do you want your blog to end up looking like the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile where it is apparent that the sole purpose of your blog is to be an advertisement to make money? That is a personal question.

You have to realize that the more advertising you have, the more people may be turned off.  You have to balance.

Me personally, This Garden Is Illegal is for my fun. Profit is an afterthought. If it pays for a few more plants without taking the fun out of writing, then I am all for it. But really, I would do this even if there were no money at all involved.

I cleaned out the old gardening blogroll today. It must be done once in awhile to remove the abandoned blogs. I always find it a bit sad when I do it. While I understand that lives and living them sometimes interfere with recording them, I nevertheless feel a certain amount of regret that the voices of one more person are no longer recorded and that shortly, their words will be gone forever (because I am assuming that either they will stop paying their hosting bill or Blogger will delete the blog for inactivity).  There were almost 30 gone this time.  Some were blogs that I had enjoyed quite a bit. It is almost like an internet induced death.

But, while there is loss, there is also growth. I get requests almost every day for people to get added to my blogroll and the Garden Blog Search. I would encourage anyone who has a gardening blog (even a semi-gardening blog) to let me know about it. I would love to add it to my blogroll and to the Search. No blog is too small or too new! We all have a garden that we should be sharing!

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.