A family member needed a home for a small rose plant years ago. We planted it in a spot tucked away. Last year I pruned it heavily. I just happened to look its way yesterday and went running to get a scissors to bring these massive, pink, sweet-scented flowers indoors to enjoy.

It’s time to get back to maintaining this site. During this long hiatus, I have been deep into programming a commercial WordPress site. I won’t bore you with the details, but “less is more” is the key to making a responsive, nimble, easy-to-use site.

Among programmers, a maxim attributed to Robert C. Martin is, “The fastest code is the code that never runs.” As I was whittling away at the plugins and code used on this commercial site, I hit an “ah-ha” moment when I discovered that an often-used plugin to speed up websites was actually making each page load 100 milliseconds longer. I’d optimized the site so much that the plugin to speed things up no longer made sense.

Another moment of clarity came when I looked at the substantial SEO (search engine optimization) plugin the site used. It promises to do a lot, and it makes it sound like search engines will ignore your site if you don’t use it. But when I discovered that all search engines look for are a few bits of descriptive information in your output, and that it takes just a few lines of code to insert those into all your pages, I chucked the massive SEO plugin and instantly sped up every page.

Now I have the wherewithal to devote time to this site again—to share the beauty of nature that surrounds me. It’s so easy to take it for granted. Out my window, all I see is nature. I can step out of the house and be in the woods, where I and our two dogs are the only visitors on the paths that meander through the trees.

There is too much beauty and wonder not to share.

So, it is back to posting and applying what I’ve learned to this site.