Cephalaria gigantea
Back in July I posted about the strange search terms that brought people to Wellywoman. They do make me laugh. So on this grotty, miserable, November day I thought I’d post about the ones I’ve had since, in an attempt to cheer myself up, if no one else. Oh and there are a few completely unseasonal photos along the way to hopefully bring some colour to the day.
It’s a weird mix which I suppose rather sums up the internet in all it’s glory. There are those clearly desperate for enlightenment on a particular topic. I often feel like I want to respond to them or learn a bit more about them. It’s a little like people watching at an airport when I wonder where the people around me are going to, who they’ll be meeting and why. The ‘my lawn is boggy and faces north’ really should be advised to give up the lawn unless he or she wants to cultivate moss. The especially simplistic ‘tree with red fruit’ says to me not a gardener. Possibly someone who has moved into a house with a tree in the garden that has red fruit on it and has no other points of reference other than the obvious. They may be some time in their attempts to discover what their tree actually is with such little information at hand. My sympathies go out to ‘itching like ants crawling’ although I’m relieved they didn’t add where they were itching. I doubt very much they found any solace from my blog.
There are the nosey, searching for ‘where does Carol Klein go on holiday?’ and ‘how tall is Carol Klein?’. Why would you want to know how tall Carol is?
‘Why is Alan Titchmarsh boring?’ did make me chuckle, although it is rather mean and really what did they hope to find? Did they really think they would find an answer?
The fascination with Monty Don’s clothes continues although it seems to have moved away from his shirts to his footwear. After my last ‘Mind Boggles’ post Danielle from Tasmania left a comment to say she had actually found my blog whilst searching for what type of shirt Monty wears. It has been fascinating to read about her gardening on the other side of the world and to think it was Monty’s shirts that introduced us.
Dahlia ‘Nuit d’Ete’
The welly fetish searches continue with a particular interest out there apparently in welly aroma. ‘Forced to smell her wellies’, ‘I love the smell of sweaty wellies’ and ‘who likes sniffing their wellies?’ are all rather disturbing but I think it is the strange random search terms that puzzle me the most.
‘A knight and lady went riding one day in forest’. . . sounds like the start to some Arthurian tale. Or how about the long-winded and grammatically dodgy ‘what is the French for excuse me madam whereabouts are your shopping trolleys at’?
Corncockle
My favourite has to be though ‘how do I get rid of slug slime which has dried on my cat?’ That sounds like one lazy cat for a slug to be able to climb on board and leave behind it’s slimy residue. I’m not even sure I’ve ever met a cat that would be happy to share its fur with a slug. And aren’t they always preening themselves? Does make you wonder whether the cat was actually still alive?
And finally, this was actually gleaned from my spam box. Normally nothing there is worth bothering with. It’s either incomprehensible gobbledygook or if it isn’t, you wish it was, then you wouldn’t be subjected to the unsavoury elements of the internet. But this I thought was a gem. No idea whether it was a genuine compliment and things just got a bit lost in translation or whether they thought it was a cunning way to ensnare me. And so, I leave you with, ‘an excellent site . . . I am sending it to a few pals sharing in delicious. And of course, thanks in your sweat!’
I, too, would like to thank you in your sweat. You definitely put a smile on my face and a chuckle in my throat… :-)
(Excuse me while I wash down that chuckle with a glass of cabernet…)
:) The internet is one strange place.
But my blog is a boring place, it seems… My number one search term is “bring her flowers” – which apparently leads to an entry I posted about buying flowers for my Mother-In-Law…
(Plastic tubs also rate rather highly, probably due to The Puddles…)
I don’t understand quite a lot of the questions that are asked, just as well maybe! If anyone is still interested, Carol Klein is a lot smaller than me. When she came here filming for BBC 2’s programme ” Open Gardens” a few years ago, I would say she was about 5ft 2ins. I would assume that she is still the same now!!
Your reply did make me chuckle, Pauline.
What a laugh! Thanks for cheering up my grey foggy day here too! :D
That’s OK Cathy. To be honest it the people out there on the internet that provide me with the material. ;)
I’m disconcerted by ‘red flowers in July’ with no country – so could be almost anything anywhere. And oh how I wish we could answer some of those questions. “How to plant spekboom cuttings?” – I just make a little hole, and tuck them in. There is no ‘how’ involved, but I CAN’T tell them …
I confess that we accidentally stumbled across your blog a couple of months ago while researching ‘how many house moves should be endured before owning a greenhouse’ and now we are hooked.
We hadn’t read part1 and wondered initially where this post was heading, all has become clear.
Fascinating subject and one that interests us immensely – the mindset of the researcher and the algorithms employed by the search engines.
Our site returns a lot of hits from a search on ‘manure’ – to be expected methinks. It does though, quite surprisingly, receive an unusually high quota of hits from those searching on ‘potato’. Our website, much like our vegetable beds is nearly void of potatoes and we were curious of the high volume of traffic from a g***le search where some 225,000,000+ records were found.
We found the culprits, 3 to be exact, all images of potatoes sporting the name ‘potato.jpg’.
The devil in me is considering renaming them ‘tree with red fruit.jpg’ so as to confuse the non-gardeners amongst them.
Nice post WW :)
Fantastic, always hilarious. The mind does boggle with some of those ones!
The cat with slug slime made me chuckle. I should have thought about my blog title when I set up my Through The Keyhole blog. You can imagine what people want to see through their keyholes, can’t you?
A most enjoyable post! I look at my blog search terms and among the mostly obvious are the occasional oddball ones.
Nice pictures, I especially like the corncockle. xx
I thought nothing would make me laugh more than ‘Alan Titchmarsh’s crotch’ but ‘who likes to sniff their wellies?’ came close!
I did eventually find a source in my search for Monty Don style shirts: Old Town – http://www.old-town.co.uk
It wasn’t me that did the search for Monty’s boots – I don’t really dig his footwear, just his shirts.
On the other side of the globe here we are moving into late Spring, one of my favourite times of the year. Incidentally, in 6 month’s time I am at my absolute least favourite time of the year; May with its long dark days, cold and generally miserable weather resulting in me being irritable and counting down the days until the solstice.
So I’m currently making hay while the sun shines and have been getting up at 5am and sometimes earlier to get out and do a few hours in the garden before getting ready for work. My husband thinks I’m nuts. My neighbours think I’m nuts gardening after dusk with a headtorch on. Oh well, we get long days this far south so I like to make the most of them.
Maybe The Mind Boggles could be a twice yearly post? I certainly got a laugh out of reading this post and laughed for days after reading the first one (“Oh no I’ve been sprung!”). I wonder how many other searches have come forward and sheepishly admitted how they found your blog? Judging by some of the searches, I bet you’re hoping some of them will stay anonymous!
Some absolutely brilliant gems WW I only wished that Blogger provided such detailed information. I’m aware that some people have stumbled across my blog under the misapprehension that I’m a seamstress of some description, which could not be further from the truth.
Thanks Anna. I didn’t realise blogger didn’t provide that sort of info. That’s a pity. It is a little disconcerting to realise that wellies provide so fascination to so many. ;)
Hilarious! You sent me over to what search terms bring people to my own blog, but sadly they are all boring garden-related ones. Maybe I should scour my spambox…