Anytime I can just pick some weed in my back yard and turn it into something useful, it intrigues me. I have long been a fan of making dandelion wine, in spite of the fact that it is an incredibly time consuming task.

But there is another backyard weed that I find can be put to good use with far less trouble. It is Chamomile. You can actually make tea from the flowers. In fact it is thought to have a soothing effect, so it is great as a bedtime tea. I have also plucked raspberry leaves for the same purpose.

With chamomile all you have to do is pluck the flowers and dry them out. The next step is to steep them in hot water. Without going into detail, you can believe me when I say that it is much easier than dandelion wine. But then it is not quite as satisfying as dandelion wine either.

The other fact I found interesting about chamomile, after putting together a folio on the subject, was that the vikings used to put it in their shampoo to make their long braided locks shiny and lustrous! It is a comical image until you think of those braids protruding from a horned helmet on top of the head of an axe-wielding berserker!

Well, I have been tampering with InDepthInfo’s format again. I really liked the “new” look, but the fact was that the number of page views went down on every folio where I installed it. Also the ad revenue fell off. I consoled myself, thinking that at least the better look might get me more links, from those who did visit the site. Alas, it was a false hope.

Honestly, I could not figure out why there was a fall-off in traffic. But a quirk of fate stepped in to clue me in to a possibilty. I found a photograph for my how to make eggnog webpages. It was fairly large. When I put it on the site, it immediately dropped several positions on the search engines. I was flabbergasted. I have always been told that images are good. When I create a page on squidoo it fairly screams for some kind of image.

I removed the image, and POW, the folio pages were back up to normal. I put on my thinking cap, made sure the gears interfaced with the gears in my brain, turned the crank, and started the wheels turning. The only real difference between the two situations was that the photo forced a lot of the text below the fold. I am thinking that it might make a difference how much of the text, not just content, appears where the average browser will see it without scrolling.

So I have created a new template. I am still not happy with how it looks but it does force a considerable amount of text above the fold. I am trying it out on the Days of the Week folio. I’ll keep you posted on how it goes.

Weekdays, the New, New Look