2012 in Review – Potted Plant Society’s Annual Report with Season Greetings, Statistics, City Skyline, Mountains, Spotlights and Fireworks!

Continuing the festive spirit as 2012 departs and 2013 arrives, Potted Plant Society would like to thank and appreciate, wholeheartedly, everybody who visited, liked and/or commented on various posts and pages, with the gesture and formality of presenting this stylish 2012 Annual Report, based on some data from the “stats helper monkeys” at WordPress.

Here is an excerpt from the Annual Report of
Potted Plant Society

• 4,329 films were submitted to the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. Potted Plant Society had 16,000 views in 2012. If each view were a film, Potted Plant Society would power 4 Film Festivals.
• In 2012, there were 582 new posts, not bad for the first year! There were 133 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 38 MB. That’s about 3 pictures per week.
• The busiest day of the year was 26th August with 251 views.
• The most popular post on that day was Reblog: Terra Cotta Pot Dolls.

Attractions in 2012

These are the posts that received the most views in 2012:

1. Reblog: Save Your Garden Seeds 2 comments August 2012
2. Container Garden 0 comments
3. Reblog: our succulent garden 0 comments August 2012
4. Reblog: My Terrarium Project(s) 2012 0 comments July 2012
5. About 2 comments

How did visitors find Potted Plant Society?

The top referring sites in 2012 were:

1. facebook.com
2. networkedblogs.com
3. wordpress.com
4. soundeagle.wordpress.com
5. queenslandbegonia.wordpress.com

Some visitors came searching mostly for seeds, terrarium, indoor rock garden, terrariums, and terrarium plants.

Where did visitors come from?

There were visitors from 139 countries in all. Most visitors came from the United States. Australia, Canada, India and the United Kingdom were not far behind.

Potted Plant Society’s Country Data

Top Views by Country between 25 February 2012 and 31 December 2012

Country	Views
United States	5,882
Australia	3,117
Canada	686
India	679
United Kingdom	657
Philippines	397
Singapore	267
Malaysia	218
Thailand	194
Brazil	186
Turkey	169
New Zealand	166
Netherlands	160
France	149
Indonesia	145
Mexico	141
South Africa	133
Portugal	115
Spain	109
Argentina	108
Germany	101
Colombia	97
Hong Kong	97
Greece	83
Hungary	81
Russian Federation	78
Republic of Korea	78
Japan	78
United Arab Emirates	71
Pakistan	67
Italy	66
Viet Nam	55
Sweden	54
Romania	54
Lithuania	53
Chile	47
Trinidad and Tobago	46
Israel	41
Costa Rica	41
Croatia	41
Belgium	40
Taiwan	40
Poland	40
Saudi Arabia	38
Kuwait	38
Ukraine	38
Bulgaria	37
Puerto Rico	35
Serbia	35
Ireland	32
Czech Republic	32
Switzerland	31
Slovakia	31
Sri Lanka	24
Malta	23
Finland	23
Jordan	23
Lebanon	22
Slovenia	21
Denmark	21
Bosnia and Herzegovina	20
Egypt	20
Norway	19
Cambodia	19
Bangladesh	17
Cyprus	16
Kenya	16
Iraq	16
Côte d’Ivoire	15
Jamaica	14
Macedonia, the Former Yugoslav Republic	14
United Republic of Tanzania	14
Austria	14
Honduras	14
Mauritius	13
Nigeria	12
Myanmar	11
Moldova	11
Peru	11
Morocco	10
Macao	10
Venezuela	10
Georgia	10
Uruguay	9
Guyana	8
Nepal	8
Panama	7
Estonia	7
Armenia	7
Réunion	7
Ecuador	6
Azerbaijan	6
Iceland	6
Maldives	6
Uganda	6
Oman	5
Qatar	5
Latvia	5
Bahrain	5
Namibia	5
Paraguay	5
Montserrat	5
Belarus	5
Dominican Republic	5
Tunisia	4
Montenegro	4
Lao People’s Democratic Republic	4
Barbados	4
Guadeloupe	4
Ethiopia	3
Mongolia	3
Guatemala	3
Saint Lucia	3
Ghana	3
Northern Mariana Islands	2
Botswana	2
Grenada	2
Zambia	2
Algeria	2
Malawi	2
Saint Kitts and Nevis	2
Zimbabwe	2
Swaziland	2
Jersey	1
Antigua and Barbuda	1
Bhutan	1
Fiji	1
Belize	1
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines	1
Cayman Islands	1
Luxembourg	1
Aruba	1
French Polynesia	1
Guam	1
Palestinian Territory, Occupied	1
Bolivia	1
Brunei Darussalam	1
Democratic Republic of the Congo	1

Global Map of Visitors to Potted Plant Society

25 August 2012 to End of 2012

Click here to see Potted Plant Society’s Annual Report complete with Statistics, City Skyline, Mountains, Spotlights and Fireworks to mark the end of 2012 and to celebrate the start of 2013!

Season Greetings from SoundEagle: Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and Joyful Holiday

SoundEagle says: I would like to share the following poem with all followers and members of the Potted Plant Society.

I have a list of folks I know all written in a book,
And every year at Christmas time I go and take a look.
And that is when I realize that these names are of a part,
Not of the book in which they’re written, but of my very heart.

Each name denotes someone who has crossed my path sometime,
And in that meeting they’ve become the rhythm of the rhyme.
And while it sounds fantastic of me to make this claim,
I really feel that I’m composed of each remembered name.

And while you may not be aware of any special link,
Just meeting you has shaped my life more than you can think.
For once you’ve met somebody, those years they can’t erase,
The memories of a pleasant word or of a friendly face.

So never think that my Christmas greeting is just a mere routine,
Of names upon a Christmas list forgotten in between.
For when I send a Christmas greeting that is addressed to you,
It’s because you’re on that list of folks whom I am indebted to.

For I’m but a total of the many ones I’ve met,
And you happen to be one of those I prefer not to forget.
And whether I’ve known you for many years or few,
In some way you had a part in shaping things I do.

So every year when Christmas comes, I realize anew,
The biggest gift that life can give is meeting someone like you.
And may the spirit of Christmas that forever and ever endures,
Leave its richest blessings in the heart of you and yours.

Author is unknown or contested, and many variations and adaptations exist.

Mother’s Day Preview in the Store

Reblogged from limelight floral design:

A Succulent Wedding

Lulu's Cake Blooms

Have I mentioned that I love succulents? Good. So I don’t know how these fantastic walls of greenery grow, but I want one in my house:

Do you think that’s possible for me? Look at how in love they are! I love the colors of this wedding: green, grey, turqoise and a majestic red. I don’t think I’ve ever seen these colors come so well together.

Remember when I said that succulents would be a good gift? How ’bout in a can?

I love the pictures of them they stuck in there too. Cute touch.

The cake I designed for them would be two maroon sixteen inch cakes separated by a grey fondant covered dummy cake and sugar paste succulents and feathers. There’d also be a sugar banner on the top of the cake that says “We Did” or maybe their initials. The cake would feed two hundred and eighty.

I love…

View original post 63 more words

How to Make a Wedding Celebration that Keeps on Growing

Christmas Decoration WIN

World Environment Day

Click the image below to learn more about World Environment Day.

One man’s trash is another man’s potted plant (by virtue of the transformative power of Reuse, Reduce, Recycle, Recover and Repurpose).

Celebrated by the Potted Plant Society, World Environment Day turns 40 in 2012 and coincides with the transit of Venus, one of the rarest of predictable celestial phenomena, when the planet Venus appears as a small, dark disc moving across the face of the Sun from 22:09 UTC on 5 June to 04:49 UTC on 6 June.

Aimed at being the largest and most widely mobilized global day for positive environmental action, World Environment Day (WED) is celebrated every year on 5th June to raise global awareness of the need to take positive environmental action. It is run by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), which was form in 1972.^[1]

5th June was the day on which United Nations Conference on the Human Environment began. The United Nations Conference on the Human Environment was held from 5th to 16th June 1972. It was established by the United Nations General Assembly in 1972.^[2] The first World Environment Day was on 1973.

World Environment Day is hosted every year by a different city with a different theme, and is commemorated with an international exposition in the week of 5 June. The city chosen to host the 2012 World Environment Day is Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.

• [Theme 2012] Green Economy: Does it include you?

  The UN Environment Programme defines the Green Economy as one that results in improved human wellbeing and social equity, while significantly reducing environmental risks and ecological scarcities. In its simplest expression, a green economy can be thought of as one which is low-carbon, resource-efficient and socially inclusive.

  Practically speaking, a Green Economy is one whose growth in income and employment is driven by public and private investments that reduce carbon emissions and pollution, enhance energy and resource efficiency, and prevent the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services. These investments need to be catalyzed and supported by targeted public expenditure, policy reforms and regulation changes.

  But what does all this mean for you? If the Green Economy is about social equity and inclusiveness then technically it is all about you! The question therefore asks you to find out more about the Green Economy and assess whether, in your country, you are being included in it.

References

1. ^ World Environment Day 2012 on June 5
2. ^ United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2994 session -1 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment page 1 on 15 December 1972

Mother’s Day

Click the image below to reveal a more intimate image of Mother’s Day.

Mother’s Day is a celebration honouring mothers and celebrating motherhood, maternal bonds and the influence of mothers in society.

Friendship Day

Date	Venue	Function and Guest Speaker	Plant of the Month
12 MAY	Merthyr Uniting Church Hall	FRIENDSHIP DAY Bryan Hillier and Bronwyn Hillier on Health Benefits of Indoor Plants and Dracaena	Dracaena or Cordyline

FRIENDSHIP DAY: Traditionally held annually on the second Saturday of the month of May. Starting at 12.45pm, it is a fun afternoon with Lucky Door prizes and Raffle prizes. Open to all interested folks and other garden club members from Queensland and elsewhere. Admission is by invitation from or pre-registration with the president or secretary.

Come and join us at our society meeting for an informative, fun-filled day with yummy food and nice raffles as well as Bryan Hillier and Bronwyn Hillier as Guest Speakers, and Dracaena or Cordyline as Plant of the Month.

A little about Bryan…Dracaena Farm Nursery is a production nursery, growing good-quality, high-performing plants for the Retail market for over 23 years. A family owned and operated business, Dracaena Farm Nursery has received numerous awards at both State (5 awards) and National (2 awards, 2009, 2010) level.

Bryan’s been strongly involved in the Nursery and Garden Industry for some 30 years. He was the Nursery and Garden Industry Queensland President a few years ago, and just stepped down in November 2011 from 6 years of service at National level in his roles as Nursery & Garden Industry Australia Board Member, Vice-President and President, as well as a Board Member for the National Industry Advisory Council (IAC Committee) for several years.

He’s passionate about plants, gardening and business … and he also LOVES his fishing too, when he can find the time.

	Bronwyn Hillier, Office & Sales Manager Phone: 07 5496 2905 Fax: 07 5496 2722 Email: dracaena_farm@bigpond.com Address: 87 Campbell Parade, Beachmere Qld 4510
Best Medium Production Nursery National Winner: 2010, 2009 Best Medium Production Nursery State Winner: 2010, 2009, 2007, 2005, 2004 Young Achiever of the Year 2003: Amanda Hillier Grower of the Year 2003

Earth Day

Earth Day is an annual day on which events are held worldwide to increase awareness and appreciation of the Earth‘s natural environment. Earth Day is now coordinated globally by the Earth Day Network,^[1] and is celebrated in more than 175 countries every year.^[2] In 2009, the United Nations designated April 22 International Mother Earth Day.^[3] Earth Day is planned for April 22 in all years at least through 2015.^[4]

References

1. ^ “Earth Day Network”. Earthday.net. http://www.earthday.net/. Retrieved 2011-04-22. 
2. ^ [1]^{[dead link]}
3. ^ “General Assembly Proclaims 22 April ‘International Mother Earth Day’ Adopting By Consensus Bolivia-Led Resolution”. United Nations. 2009-04-22. http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2009/ga10823.doc.htm. Retrieved 2011-04-22. 
4. ^ “When is Earth Day?”. Apples4theteacher.com. http://www.apples4theteacher.com/holidays/earth-day/when-is-earth-day.html. Retrieved 2012-04-22. 

This planet is not terra firma.
It is a delicate flower and it must be cared for.
It’s lonely.
It’s small.
It’s isolated, and there is no resupply.
And we are mistreating it.

– Scott Carpenter, astronaut

Speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee.

– Biblical proverb

It is only when we are aware of the earth and of the earth as poetry that we truly live.

– Henry Beston, 1935, Herbs and the Earth

Touch the earth, love the earth, honour the earth, her plains, her valleys, her hills, and her seas; rest your spirit in her solitary places.

– Henry Beston

I conjure you, my brethren, to remain faithful to earth, and do not believe those who speak unto you of superterrestrial hopes! Poisoners they are, whether they know it or not.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

Remain true to the earth.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

I thought how utterly we have forsaken the Earth, in the sense of excluding it from our thoughts. There are but few who consider its physical hugeness, its rough enormity. It is still a disparate monstrosity, full of solitudes, barrens, wilds. It still dwarfs, terrifies, crushes. The rivers still roar, the mountains still crash, the winds still shatter. Man is an affair of cities. His gardens, orchards and fields are mere scrapings. Somehow, however, he has managed to shut out the face of the giant from his windows. But the giant is there, nevertheless.

– Wallace Stevens, Letters, p. 73

The earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a book, to be studied by geologists and antiquaries chiefly, but living poetry like the leaves of a tree, which precede flowers and fruit — not a fossil earth, but a living earth; compared with whose great central life all animal and vegetable life is merely parasitic.

– Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Earth teach me to forget myself
as melted snow forgets its life.
Earth teach me resignation
as the leaves which die in the fall.
Earth teach me courage
as the tree which stands all alone.
Earth teach me regeneration
as the seed which rises in the spring.

– William Alexander, A Father’s Book, 1997

Talk of mysteries! Think of our life in Nature — daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it — rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks. The solid earth!

– Henry David Thoreau

Go where he will, the wise man is at home,
His hearth the earth, his hall the azure dome.

– Ralph W. Emerson

The earth is the very quintessence of the human condition.

– Hannah Arendt

It was not until we saw the picture of the earth, from the moon, that we realized how small and how helpless this planet is — something that we must hold in our arms and care for.

– Margaret Mead

As we begin to comprehend that the earth itself is a kind of manned spaceship hurtling through the infinity of space — it will seem increasingly absurd that we have not better organized the life of the human family.

– Hubert H. Humphrey

Smile O voluptuous coolbreathed earth!
Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees!
Earth of departed sunset!
Earth of the mountains misty-top!
Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon just tinged with blue!
Earth of shine and dark mottling the tide of the river!
Earth of the limpid gray of clouds brighter and clearer for my sake!
Far-swooping elbowed earth!
Rich apple-blossomed earth!
Smile, for your lover comes!

– Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, 1855, I Celebrate Myself, Line 439

God owns heaven, but He craves the earth.

– Anne Sexton

Gardening is not a rational act. What matters is the immersion of the hands in the earth, that ancient ceremony of which the Pope kissing the tarmac is merely a pallid vestigial remnant.

– Margaret Attwood

I am interested in the way that we look at a given landscape and take possession of it in our blood and brain. None of us lives apart from the land entirely; such an isolation is unimaginable. If we are to realize and maintain our humanity, we must come to a moral comprehension of earth and air as it is perceived in the long turn of seasons and of years.

– N. Scott Momaday

To see the earth as we now see it, small and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves as riders on the earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness in the unending night — brothers who see now they are truly brothers.

– Archibald MacLeish

The word humility (also human) is derived from the Latin humus, meaning “the soil”. Perhaps this is not simply because it entails stooping and returning to earthly origins, but also because, as we are rooted in this earth of everyday life, we find in it all the vitality and fertility unnoticed by people who merely tramp on across the surface, drawn by distant landscapes.

– Piero Ferrucci, Inevitable Grace

God does not die on that day when we cease to believe in a personal deity, but we die when our lives cease to be illuminated by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder, the source of which is beyond all reasoning. … When the sense of the earth unites with the sense of one’s body, one becomes earth of the earth, a plant among plants, an animal born from the soil and fertilizing it. In this union, the body is confirmed in its pantheism.

– Dag Hammarskjold

I pledge devotion to the earth, our one and only home, and to the life this earth sustains; one nation, one spirit indivisible, with freedom and fulfillment for all.

– Bruce Hagen, New Pledge of Allegiance, 1983