A look back

This blog in 2012:*

I posted 173 times and received 39,923 views from readers from 147 countries.

(I do, however, take WordPress’s “My Stats” with a grain of salt.  A few mornings ago, it showed me with 10 views from 4 visitors in 6 countries.  Maybe one viewer was on an airplane?)

Posts with the most views: “Enclosures of the kings” and “A garden in the Virunga hills” — both in February and both after enclos*ure was featured on WordPress’s “Freshly Pressed” and Fine Gardening’s “Garden Photo of the Day.”

Most viewed individual photos:  Japanese Tea House (below)

and Tanner Springs Park (below)

Thumbnails of both are featured on pages one and two of Google Image Search for those topics.

Search term bringing the most views to this blog: “Chateau Gaillard.”  I have never posted about Chateau Gaillard.

Strangest search term bringing (2) views to this blog: “why would someone enclos [sic] a front porch and make their side entrance the main address.”  Please, I would never do that.

Best blogging lesson learned:  In a country where the power goes off several times a day, click on “save draft” constantly.

Most popular enclos*ure photo on Pinterest:

from “A visit to GOFTC.”    “A pole is placed in the middle of the [compost] pile so it can slide in and out. If it is pulled out warm and damp, the pile is in good shape.”

Most annoying WordPress feature:  a spellcheck that changes ‘enclos*ure’ to ‘enclose*ure.’   Also, quote marks are frequently facing the wrong direction — see just above.

My own favorite image this year: I really couldn’t pick one, but I did love the pouring teapot in the garden of the Sowathe Tea Factory last January (below).

Thank you all for visiting enclos*ure in 2012.

I leave you with this interesting quote:

People often ask us, in an amazed way, “how do you possibly garden together?”. . . [O]ne person’s strengths fill in for the other’s weaknesses. The human eye contains two kinds of receptors: rods respond to light or darkness; cones are sensitive to color and detail. Men’s eyes have more rods, a thousand times more sensitive to light than cones, so men wait for low light, often seeing better in the dark. With a plethora of cones, women may stumble in the dark but are better able to respond to the subtle blush of a rose. It doesn’t stop there. Men and women process the information that comes in through their eyes differently. Women store visual information on both sides of their brains, men on one side only: this give men better depth perception, but at the price of color recall, which is easier for women. Ten percent of men are functionally color blind, and almost none have the selective capacity of a woman’s eye, well trained.

— Nori and Sandra Pope, from Color by Design:  Planting the Contemporary Garden

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*according to my WordPress.com Annual Report and “My Stats.”