Faithful followers, Below is a summary of my Blog stats for the year.
I was gobsmacked to learn that readers in twenty eight countries have viewed my posts. One of the largest sources of hits came from India. Given the mass of population I suppose this is understandable, but just how I managed to reach into the subcontinent is a mystery. It certainly seems strange that a small blog, originating of the West Coast of Canada, would find such a large and diverse audience. I see that I had two visitors from Iraq. Could these be former intelligence types from my days of monitoring Saddam Hussein and his Baathist intelligence arm thirty seven years ago? I somehow doubt I held that significant a profile to warrant such attention after all these years. Perhaps they stumbled upon my E Book, Chasing the Dragon’s Tail available through Amazon or Smashwords.com, and decided to peek into my blog.
Around the peninsula things are quiet. We had our ‘week’ of winter with freezing temperatures and a skiff of snow. It was nice to watch shinny hockey on the frozen fields, as geese surrendered the slough for a while. It reminded me of our time in Ottawa when the winter terrain offered crisp, clean scenes. My wife and I would bundle up our toddler and head out onto the Rideau canal for skating or the Gatineau hills and local golf courses for cross country ski expeditions. I’m not a real fan of cold and ice, but these were pleasant memories.
I took down the fence around my lower orchard. It was originally set up to protect fledgling cider apple trees from marauding deer. I have decided to re-establish it across the bottom of our property just on the high side of a ditch which hosts a seasonal stream. My four legged nuisances can stand in icy cold water, on their side of the barrier, and stare wistfully at my blueberry bushes and apple trees. Speaking of apple trees, I have four more trees awaiting ‘hair cuts’. When I first took pruning sheers to hand, it was a tenuous procedure, with a snip snip here and there, deathly afraid I would kill the trees. Experience and my neighbor have taught me to have a good go at it now. The trees look bare, but they thrive and roar back to full regalia in the spring.
Enough of my chatter for now. All the best of the Season, with grand wishes for the New Year to my readers…and to those people in the middle east… Salim alikoom.
Here’s an excerpt:
A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 650 times in 2013. If it were a cable car, it would take about 11 trips to carry that many people.
