I had already written a post for today but I reconsidered publishing it when I realized it was boring. I had begun with a weather report. I mentioned that it’s cold and there is snow on the local mountains for the first time this winter. Then I went on to review the four books I read this week. Simply put, two were good, two were just alright. There you have it, an entire blog summarized in two sentences. Trust me, reading the original post would have wasted your time.

If I am not going to write about the weather or my reading list what else needs to be discussed to document our off grid island life? The problem is, as again, I have mentioned before, I write better when I have a glass of wine in my hand. But let’s be honest, I may just think that I write better with a glass of wine. It is more likely a situation where my judgement is impaired and boring posts slip past quality control. That is where my Mom came in.. She never let me get away with anything. If a post was boring, redundant or God forbid misused the word lay for lie, Mom would be on the phone to tell me.. Sigh.. I miss her. I still have E to check my work but in eight years he has only found fault with content once. So he’s not really a critic as much as a supportive partner.

I don’t really write to entertain you and I understand that much like the Seinfeld show often my blog is a story about nothing. But I do appreciate that you are all busy people who take the time to follow along so I try to make an effort to make the posts somewhat interesting…

Some of you may not know but I receive stats from WordPress on how the blog is doing. For example I know when someone reads the blog in Australia that it is probably my niece as she is the only person I know there right now. There is someone in the Netherlands who reads frequently but I have no idea who they are. As my friends wander around the world, I am thrilled that they can stay in touch with the activities of the island through this blog.

Some 65,000 times my blog postings have been read. I am the first to admit the content was best in the early days. But each posting is ranked in the stats provided, based on the number of times it has been read. There is one post which is read (hit) at least once a day. I have written 691 posts since beginning the blog when we got here. (Where was this literary energy in school when my essays were due?)

Where was I? Right, I was explaining my stats. One of the stats shows me how you, the reader found my blog. Through a link on Facebook perhaps or was it found by a loyal follower once it had been sent to their mailbox. Or, was this blog discovered through a random google search?

There are two of my blog posts which have been read almost twice as many times as all of the rest. The posting with the most hits, was written last February when the best darned dog in the whole wide world died. All of you were so supportive. I think many of you were able to empathize with what I was going through and perhaps shared the writing with friends. (https://deergarden.me/2019/01/29/my-bunny-rabbit/

But the second most read posting on this blog is discovered day after day with a variety of search engines. World wide, readers from countries like the Netherlands, France, China, Russia and the US find my blog when they search with the three words Naked Off Grid. It brings them to my posting A Naked April (https://deergarden.me/2016/03/04/a-naked-april/).

They come for the Naked April but they find my blog, I don’t mind. But I do wonder if I should try to increase my readership by titling a few more postings

with Naked Somethings