Landmarks — accomplishments — are like a melody. Regardless of your taste in music, music is more than organized sound. Music firmly places you in time. When a melody starts, that is now. After a note or two you have a now and a past. And when you anticipate where the melody is going, you have a past, a present and a future. A melody fixes you in time. So do landmarks.
Your first day in school is like the beginning of a melody, each passing year gives you a present and a past and the next grade a future. It’s the same thing with traveling. You leave to visit a country, travel there, visit and know you will come home. It is also the same with building a website.
the fall of 2008 I started writing articles about wild plants on a MAC blog format, which explains some of strange ways I had things organized then. In the spring of 2009 I started making related videos and posting them on You Tube. In that first year I wrote about more than 100 plants, and made 46 videos. A year later it was close 400 plants — counting related species — and 100 videos. Now, as three full years are about to close it is over 800 plants and 133 videos. It is also some 1.2 million video views and 14,ooo subscribers. this month a new landmark was made, a new website. Nearly everything on the old site is now on the new site save for one article, which has been written but not posted yet. Unlike the original site, this new website is a team effort.
The landmarks are more than just videos or plants covered. Its learning the video software, adding titles, finding a format and sticking to it. It’s coping with weather, seasonal plants, and noise pollution. It’s adjusting to a new platform and all the features it offers. It’s been quite the three years. What next? More site features, more videos, more plants, perhaps DVDs and a televison show.
There are some 4,000 edible species of plants in North America. I will be busy. The melody has started, the only question is where it will go and when will it end.
