Sunday, April 14, 2013

FOILED!

This SHOULD have been a post about springtime wild edibles in New Jersey. I had full intentions of traversing my weed filled lawn and surrounding wooded areas to harvest wild garlic, garlic mustard, chickweed, and dandelion. My finds would be thoroughly washed and prepped, and then dramatically handed to Tom so he could use his innate food nerd skills to whip them into something delicious. The result would be an informative blog post written by me, including Tom's experimental recipes. Instead, I spent a beautiful weather week cooped up in the house, bouncing between a demanding infant and a sick nine year old, hence the name of this post. If the above topics intrigue you, consider checking out some old blog posts of mine about why you should eat dandelions, and how you can eat them in soup and pasta. And you can find detailed info about these plants, as well as many others, from wild food expert Wildman Steve Brill.

Instead of providing you new and interesting information about eating your lawn, this post will mostly be a note to myself about all the work I need to do in the garden in the next few weeks. Down with runny noses and hacking coughs! Onward!

In zone 6, it's time to:
  • Direct sow carrots, beets, turnips and cilantro
  • Plant broccoli, kohlrabi, and cauliflower plants
  • Freshen up mulch in landscaped beds
In my veg/herb/medicinals garden, I need to:
  • Plant quinoa, calendula, carrots and cilantro seeds
  • Plant onion bulbs among potatoes
  • Layout new tomato/pepper beds and put out Wall-o-waters
  • Harvest and dry chickweed
  • Up pot seedlings
  • Lay out paths with cardboard and hay
  • Buy more lavender and perfume roses
  • Start basil seeds
In my landscape, I need to:
  • Transplant helleborus volunteers to the woods
  • Weed beds that need wood mulch
  • Build new front of house bed (?)
  • Consider weeding/mulching medicinal bed
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The Big Bad Blog Beginning: Marketing Gone Awry

So awhile back, I was talking to my home business and web marketing diva. I know what you're thinking right now. You're thinking, "Big deal! Everybody has a home business and web marketing diva." Maybe so, but if you're not talking to Dina at http://www.wordfeeder.com/, then you've got the wrong gal.

Since I have the right gal, Dina said, "You should start a blog to help promote your website."

"Really? How come?"

She then said something along the lines of "Hoogety boogety search engine optimization foogety moogety page hierarchy loogety toot toot meta-tags and strategic links...." and many other extremely smart things. Please keep in mind Dina has never actually said "hoogety boogety" to me in any context. What she did do was give me a brief explanation of web marketing that made complete sense, but the wisdom of which I would completely mangle upon retelling. The relevant gist was as follows - a blog, when properly done, can be a great tool to drive traffic to my website.

I mulled this over for quite some time. Could I write clear and informative articles about the decorative painting business? Er, sure, I think. New techniques, preferred paint and brush brands, offers of free templates.....Ooh, but how bout the funny fellow painter ladies I see at my teacher's studio? Or the nutjobs who I meet at craft shows?

And then I started thinking about other humorous stuff, like the time my mother swiped HER mother's mother's day gift from me and refused to give it back. And the stories from my grandfather about the 8-10 different ways he's accidentally electrocuted himself throughout the years, and yet still stands. Or about the time I spent half a day convinced that drunk people snuck into my yard during the night and dug up 48 newly planted impatiens (until I realized a deer ate them).

That's about the point that I realized that I actually want a blog to show the world how hilarious I am, and if I can throw some web marketing in there, so be it. I can make it work. For example, the two funniest things I do are 1.) garden organically 2.) allow people to speak to me. Since I paint flowers and creatures and landscapes, does it count as web marketing if I blog about growing flowers in a landscape while shouting obscenities at creatures? You betcha! And when my mother does something bizarre, should that go in there too? Absolutely. Ah, yes. Yet another blog is born.

So in the end, I will market my website the way I organic garden - seek out the advice of experts, change it all around, and find myself continually shocked when my system doesn't work. Effective? No. Funny? Oh yes indeed! Keep reading.....