As I write this, I feel the ghosts of poorly planned gardens in the past breathing down my neck and judging me. I’m at the point of the year when I will once again need to both actually be gardening as I also keep posting. I’ve not yet perfected the art of being consistent with both at the same time, and as I glance over the site fix To Do List which is awesome to behold in its own right, I am girding myself for the inevitable days ahead when I will have to remember that winter doldrum dally time is over and focus on what it’s really time to do!
The one thing I’ve decided is to ditch my unspoken plan of going back and fixing three messy migrated posts a day. Partly because I didn’t even manage to average one two weeks ago because I was too buy polishing up unfinished posts just for this month. So my new low bar goal is just that: one messy migrated clean up a week because I also have to add alt text descriptions to all images that might be in any given post. It shouldn’t be too hard since I’m all caught up for 2021, save one post I started in February, which I’m not entirely sure I will manage this week before posting this. If I manage that 1 per week until the end of April, I’ll try to bump the average up per week, and so forth until they’re all done.
Without further ado, let’s get to this week’s updates and progress notes.
Recent Changes:
- As I noted in this recent post, I have made a decision about what to do with the old “What I’ll be planting soon” widget. So hopefully this new method works out well.
- Realized I forgot to enable comments on the 2021 Plantings page, fixed that.
- I managed to get the first installment of Wild Wednesdays up! Woo! Now let’s see if I can manage it again next week.
- Added more info to the Data Page.
- Changed the plan to plant widget to keep it shorter. New upcoming plant plans will be added a day or two before when needed. Will rotate items out from widget once in the ground after adding to 2021 Plantings Page.
- Found an image for a half way point for the gallery in the Long term drought, burning permits and brush fire post, cleaned up a few typos after I added the image.
Since 2021 To Do:
- Make a new Page called 2021 Compost, and start keeping track of what’s put in the compost each year, similar to the Plantings pages.
- I cannot find my not online note of when we took our rain barrel in last fall. I may give up on this if I haven’t found it before it’s time to post this.
- I am in the process of trying out one of the accessibility widgets, but I fear the aged theme I adore and use is conflicting with it. I had to shut the widget off because images I had written lengthy alt text/descriptions for were not visible on the finished posts, though the clickable tag graphic was showing, and worked properly when clicked and would open up the longer description in a separate window. I’m worried no matter which widget I use, the lack of updates to this theme will break them. Then I’ll need to either get ahold of the original maker, or update the theme myself so the new stuff will function properly (WHICH I TOTALLY DO NOT HAVE TIME TO DO). I do want to state that I miss being able to put little side jokes in my alt texts for any who hover over and look for such, but I haven’t yet figured out a way to use it both for that and still use it to trigger whatever needs triggering so the longer alt description will work for folks using text readers. Much research to do! If anyone has suggestions, I would really truly appreciate you doing so below or through my contact page, whatever your preference.
- Speaking of widgets…either in a side widget, or set up similar to the Plantings pages or sub page from Data since that mentions our bins, and start a list of what we’ve put into the compost in any given year.
- RE: the landscape fabric rant post–don’t forget to take a picture in that same spot as the last time for a near future post follow up on the topic–but do it before more snow falls!
- And speaking of polls…does anyone really care about the recent OWVs, especially if the same images are still on the Home page? Would it be better to instead post other year variants of the most recent one for quick comparison for those that don’t click on the posts?
- Pick a deadline for what to do about the Friends? page.
- Pick a time duration for that notion of recording the environmental noise in the yard and nothing else posts.
- Figure out why the cookie consent widget isn’t WAI
Migration Hiccups Needing Fixing:
- Continue checking categories on all pre-migration move posts. The remaining that I have to fix were formerly in Conservation, Monarch Guardianship (sub of Conservation) & Plants, Seeds (sub of Plants). Note where you left off.
- Continue fixing in-site links that still point to growingingardner.wordpress.com, note where you left off.
- I also need to do a last
gallery comparison check to make sure all the images made it here in one piece and[done], check if all images are linked properly in the posts to which they belong. (still to do), note here last post checked
Accessibility Related to Do:
- Started adding image alt text/description as from February 10, 2021–Office Window View post and on to present.
- Currently have done none from the first post onwards. [Change this once started to help keep track.]
- Try out a different accessibility widget in April and see if it breaks like the current one does.
- Keep reading up on the latest accessibility changes on WP to get a better understanding of how alternate options are presented on the blog, and related—accept the fact that either Future Me is going to have to track down the Theme creator if that’s the issue since it hasn’t been updated in so long OR accept the face that Future Me is going to have to redo the Theme so all the Accessibility functions work properly.
- Don’t forget about how best to handle near-future-but-not-just-yet podcast posts for hearing impaired visitors.
- Don’t forget letter about adding closed captions for visually impaired visitors to those way-later-in-the-future videos.
Pre-migration Still to Do and Rollover (with notes and changes):
- Keep working on the garden plot plan.
- Finalize format for 2Hr Garden series for consistency.
- Finish current draft for first 2HG series this year.
- Do the darn Planting Page icon drawings already!
- Office Window Views (OWV)
- Keep adding:
- at least one 2019 unposted OWV–you left off on June 22, 2019.
- and one 2020 unposted OWV and update the slideshow –you left off on May 23, 2020.
- Go through media files, make sure all OWV labels and names are consistent.
- Make sure earliest views are tagged as such, before we came up with the “tag”.
- Keep adding:
- Continue to double check all posts’ Cats and Tags. (When you finally get around to this, note where you leave off for sanity’s sake.)
- Continue Tag cleanup (typos, dumb ideas, excessive growing in gardner).
- GiG tag removal progress: still only the first few I did immediately
- Create either a widget or something under the Our Plants page that has all the new Tags listed for posts that used to be under sub cats of Plants or newly make Project Progress.
- Do the changeover for “Friends?” Page and explain why that’s changing.
- Decide what to do for a rotating header.
- Add at least one new plant a month to “our plants”.
- Add at least one new critter a month to “Critters”.
- What is “food animals” and “food insects” supposed to represent on the data page? I’m so confused because it doesn’t seem to be what my brain wants it to be.
- Consider a Cloud tag/placement.
- Keep weeding through all draft posts, polish when possible, update when needed, ditch when not worth spending further time.
- Start story boarding the garden comic, with the intent to have a buffer for when it does finally make the light of day.
- Decide on a schedule for second story window view images.
[REMINDER TO FUTURE ME: If you shut off the scheduled post option to add something before you go to bed, don’t forget to turn it back on after you’re done so it actually posts when it’s supposed to, you silly!]
