No, it’s not my blogiversary. That’s August 27, 2002. But one year ago today, I switched from an old, outdated version of Movable Type to WordPress. Along with the change to the inner workings of the website came a whole new look–and a whole lot of work. WordPress gave me the flexibility to integrate the blog and the rest of my website, but it took time to make the conversion, and most of it didn’t happen until this winter. In the meantime, I had a little notice in the upper right that said, in effect, the rest of the site is at this other link. That’s all in the past.
The menu at the top shows the basic structure of my website. However, the menu in the sidebar will show you subsections once you are in a section. Thus, click on Links and you will see that I have several categories of Links: cold climate, cottage gardening, and upstate NY. In each of these sections, the content of the sidebar varies somewhat. My intent is to give you information in the sidebar that complements whatever section you’re in. For example, if you’re in the Essay section, the Amazon ad is configured to only show garden essay books. (Though I’ve noticed that sometimes the books are collections of essays that have nothing to do about gardening. Don’t know why that is.) Then there is a list of essay collections from my personal gardening library. And further down, in case you arrived from an external link, there is a list of recent blog entries, just in case you didn’t realize there was a blog here, too.
If you haven’t browsed around the site in a while, take a look. You might find some tidbit of information you didn’t know you needed!
Plans for the future? I want to continue to add to all of the Links sections from my backlog of bookmarked sites. I have a lot of additional essays to make available for your reading pleasure. There’s more trivia I want to add to About This Site. And I am considering adding a photo gallery–but I might try to do something with Flickr instead. My favorite part? I really love my collection of gardening quotes, and I’ve wanted to have a changing display of them since my very first blog. Finally, that’s a reality. Some of them are from fellow garden bloggers–did you notice?
Speaking of my very first blog, thanks to the Wayback Machine you can see it here.When I switched from Blogger to Movable Type, it looked like this. 
I think you’ll agree things have only improved, though I still do like my old logo.
I liek the layout of your site where did you get the template at?
Your site always looks so nice and organized…and it is full of great info. I’ve been coming here for awhile, and I’m always impressed at the changes you make….kudoos on a job well done!
Bill, I just couldn’t figure out how to incorporate it into the theme (design, skin, whatever) that I chose. I’d have to design a theme from scratch, and I haven’t found the time to do that. I do still use it on website-related stationery, which I make with PrintShop.
I like your old logo also. So how come you don’t still use it?