April Events and my one year blog anniversary

My very first post was on April 30, 2008. It was the end of the month and I had been very busy that month so I just started with my monthly events and that is how I got started doing a monthly events post at the end of each month. I started with just the Photography By Leedra blog and then later exported that blog to Leedra's Photos For Fun. At that time I stopped posting every day to Photography By Leedra blog, but continued posting a minimum of one post a day to Leedra's Photos For Fun. At Leedra's Photos For Fun I have posted a total of 723 post, counting the ones exported. Since making the change I have also posted an additional 50 post at Photography By Leedra blog, with almost 21,000 visitors there. So far since exporting to Leedra's Photos For Fun I have had 7550 visitors here. I want to thank all of you that have helped me along the way to make my blogging adventure so enjoyable. I have made so many friends with the same interest as I have.

The first weekend in April was beautiful spring weather. Jimmy and I worked out in the yard all day on Saturday. We even transplanted some fruit trees from a church friend's yard to our yard. Couple of peach and old fashioned plum trees. The friend had been mowing around them for a year and we all decided it was warm enough weather to move them. First of the next week we had temperatures in the 20s with snow. The dogwoods were beginning to bloom and we should have thought about 'dogwood winter' as it is called in east Tennessee. It does appear that 2 of them might not make it, but we have a least one of each type he gave us.

Because of the snow I took off for the smokies to get some photos. Had a nice time photographing the deer, wild turkey, pileated woodpeckers and old cabins in Cades Cove. I had to head home so I could go to work that evening and on the way home I found some wildflowers just beginning to bloom. I was excited about that. Last year I went to the Wildflower Pilgrimage in the GSMNP. I really enjoyed it, and learned so much about the wildflowers, but I was not able to attend this year. I could not plan ahead enough to register for 2 reasons. First Wendy pregnant with her first child. Second, I am management with AT&T and we have been put on restrictive vacation due the possibility of an employee strike. We were told last year that we were not allowed to make any vacation plans after April 1 of this year unless it could be cancelled. That is the main reason we took 3 weeks vacation in February.

When I saw those wildflowers then I wanted to see what all I could find. The next weekend Jimmy and I went to Panther Creek State Park (late Easter Sunday evening) and the following day I returned to the GSMNP to visit some of the trails I went on last year during the wildflower pilgrimage. The following weekend Jimmy and I went back to the GSMNP in search of wildflowers, we were not disappointed. I have been sharing some of the wildflower photos on the blog, but still have lots more to go through.

Somewhere in the middle of all that a friend at work ordered some cards using photos from my blogs. When I brought them in everybody started picking out Mother's Day cards, and from there it just kind of took off. In 2 different offices across town from each I sold 131 cards and 2 8x10 photographs during April. There have been over 1100 visitors to Leedra's Greeting Cards blog.

I also have been working on my web site, with the new software I am using it is so much more 'user friendly' for finding the right photos for my cards. I still have a long way to go in getting all the photos loaded that I need to, but I am beginning to be happy with the result. Please click here to go straight to the nature photograph home page, which has a list of my photos. Now that I have this software that I can do more with, I am considering adding the greeting cards to the web site too.

We have been on baby watch all month. With false labor a couple of times. Any day now we are going to have us a new grand baby. To follow Wendy's blog, please click here. Her original due date was May 6, but there had been some indication that he might arrive early. That date has come and gone, still no baby. So I guess we are now waiting on the due date they told Wendy to begin with. She really wants to have him before Mother's Day, for obvious reasons.