When I went out to take a picture of the garden for yesterday’s post, I saw a disturbance in the lawn.  As I looked around a saw more . . . a lot more.  The disturbed area looked like this:

Do you have any idea what it is?  I didn’t the first few times that I saw it, but eventually I discovered the culprit.  Have you figured it out yet?

I noticed movement on the lawn one night and when I investigated I saw the little fellow that was doing the digging.  That’s how I know that it’s a skunk, or skunks.  One surfeit (or is it “stench”) of this year’s babies grew up living beneath our garage.  That kind of adds an imperative to living in harmony with nature, don’t you think so?

I can understand why a collection of skunks is called a surfeit.  Seems to me that even one is an over abundance of them, but they really do have their place in the natural order.  As long as it’s not in my neighbors’ hen houses.  They don’t like that.  Not even a little bit.

From Surfeit to Paucity

Today is Sylvia’s father’s birthday– his 95th.  We’ll celebrate by meeting with other members of the family that live in Michigan.  We’ll enjoy a meal together and have cake and ice cream.  We’ll take a short hike and talk and just enjoy being together.  (They really are great folks and it is very pleasant to be with them.)

As the sun is setting we’ll load up the vehicles and head for home.  We’ll be feeling good about another birthday for Dad and another happy gathering of the clan.

Posted in cooperation with:

Hey fellow blogger, how do you organize your ideas, your photos, your post scheduling?  I need some help, but I also have some ideas.  Maybe we can help one another.  What do you say?  Let’s try.

Ideas

I get ideas.  Don’t we all?  But I’m talking about themes and topics for blog posts.  Sometimes an idea will come to me for a great post.  I’m kind of busy and don’t make a note of it.  Later, I remember that I had an idea, but can’t remember what it was.  Has this ever happened to you?

My messy computer desk.

I’ve had that spiral bound notebook (in the photo) with the aluminum cover and heavy duty rear cover around here for a few years.  It’s made for taking notes anywhere you are.  I’ve started writing down my ideas for posts in this.  When my “well is dry,” I come here to “prime the pump.”  It works.  That’s why I’m doing this post today.  I’ve been writing the core of the idea in the book.  What do you do?

For a couple of years, I used monthly calendars to record titles of blog posts in the date blocks.  In the margins I wrote down ideas for future posts.  I also kept a record of some of the interesting verification words that I found on various blogs.  Then Blogger went Captcha.  I’m sorry friend.  If you use that you are turning off people–big time.

Photos

My friend, Vanilla, mentioned to me recently that he has trouble finding photos.  I use lots of folders to organize mine.  Under My Pictures, I have a folder named Blog Stuff.  That is further divided into folders and sub-folders.  I have all my Wordless Wednesday photos in one folder.  I name the photos in the WW folder by a number/letter combination.  The number is serial, starting with 001 and incrementing by one for each week’s participation.  The photos for a given week are assigned a single letter to differentiate them and place them in order.  For example, the photos for my 96th week in WW (the car fire beside the expressway) are named 096a.jpg, 096b.jpg and 097.jpg.

The last few months, I’ve been dividing the general (non-theme or non-meme) photos into monthly folders.  I name the folders for the year and month (YYMM).  This month’s folder is “1209.”  I use naming protocols that sort into a convenient order.  To cut down on scrolling through lists, or thumb nails to find folders, I’ll rename the folder by adding “Z-” as a prefix to the name when the folder is ready to be archived.  That is working for now, but I may have to add an archive folder to separate the old stuff from the currently useful items.  Related to that, I put “0-” in front of WW for that folder so that it sorts toward the top.

A few years ago I adopted a file-name protocol for church photos.  I was receiving photos from multiple sources and had to keep them organized by when they were taken and who took them.  Further, some of the photos would be used on machines that were limited to 8 characters in the file name (not counting the extension, eg. jpg).  I used 6 numbers and two letters.  The numbers were when (YYMMDD) and the two letters indicated who and which.  “Who” being indicated by a single capital letter, while “which” indicated the photos from that day in lower case letters (a-z).  I still use a variation of that for my personal photos.  They sort conveniently into chronological order.  I like that.

What organizing techniques do you use?

Here it is Labor Day.  How did that happen?  Where did summer go?

The days are getting shorter :no: , while the nights are getting longer. 🙂   (I like the longer nights, because I don’t feel bad about sleeping late.  I’m going to do it anyway, but it helps when the sun is still low in the sky.)

I’d like to share a couple of observations from last week.  These are things that I saw here on this secondary road.  Do you know what this is?

Does this look like a map of the USA?

When I saw this picture I thought it looked like a map of the USA, with my foot “stepping in” for Florida.  That, however, is not what it is.  This is a watering hole that was made by the deer that inhabit our neighborhood.  You can almost see the hoof work in the upper right portion of the hole.  In person it was much clearer.  Over this summer the hole has grown larger and deeper.  They must be looking for water, but why in the middle of my front yard?

I’ve tried to refill this hole a couple of times.  It doesn’t work.  Any ideas?

I was returning to the house after retrieving the mail, when I noticed a problem on the leaves of one our maple trees.  I really like those trees–a lot.  So I was concerned and went over to look more closely and saw this:

What is wrong with this leaf?

It doesn’t look like a blight.  What would explain this discoloration?  Oh!  It was like the time I was learning to play ball.  We were throwing the ball back and forth.  As I watched, the ball kept getting bigger and bigger . . . and then it hit me.  Same thing happened here.  Astronomically, it’s still summer, but for we Michiganians summer is over after today.

Yes friends, it’s that time of year.  This tree is a bit earlier that most, but it won’t be long and there will be color, lots of color.  That’s okay.  I’m patient.  I will wait . . . patiently.  No hurry at all.  Okay?

After today, perhaps the cost of gasoline will come down.  As August ended, Michigan was in the news for being in the top five states for gas prices.  Why am I not proud of that?

Are you feeling a little bit “fallish?”  What are your favorite autumn activities?

Today, I want to recognize and thank a couple of my friends.  First there is the publicist at The Maa of Pricilla.

Can you believe she actually featured me as her friend in this post on Monday?  I can, because she is a friend.  Patty, the publicist, has been a regular visitor and commenter here on this secondary road.  If you don’t already know Patty, Pricilla, Abby, Sherpa, Harry, Stinky and the rest of the cast, be sure to drop by.  You’ll enjoy keeping up with the news from the Happy Goat Farm.  Fridays feature the farm cats, on Mondays we’ve been introduced to some of her wonderful friends and . . .  Why don’t you just stop by the blog.  Click on Pricilla’s badge to see the latest post on her blog.

I have mentioned Rebecca before–usually referring to her blog The Freaky Frugalite.  She has once again come forward in comments and in e-mails to provide help with some technical issues on this blog.  Are you aware of her other blogs?  There are several of them.  I particularly like The Older Geek.

You should bookmark this site if you haven’t already.  You’ll find lots of helpful advice for bloggers whether you use WordPress or Blogger.  The handy navigation buttons located below the banner will help you find posts on topics of interest.  A number of times, I have been about to write Rebecca with a question but checked on this blog where I found the answer to my question already given in an easy-to-understand presentation.

So thanks Rebecca and thanks Patty.  I tip my hat to you.

Update

About the time I posted this, I received notification that Rebecca had answered a question about adding smilies to my smilie plugin.  :yea:   I found it here.  I tried it and it worked! :cheer:   Life is great when you have such fine friends as these two. :dance:

I was reminded this morning of a scene that I had witnessed a few years ago while looking out my window.  I’d like to share it with you today.

Summer Afternoon

Oppressive heat of day has passed
Warmth of late afternoon drapes the landscape like the winter quilt upon your bed
Evening, waiting in the wings, has not yet made her entrance
As I gaze out my window at the beauty of the bucolic scene
The neighbor is quietly feeding his cattle
Then I notice her as she gracefully moves through the tall grass of the low land
She stops, lifts her head, perks up her ears and looks in the direction of the neighbor’s barn
She sees no threat so the young doe lowers her head and begins to chew on the lush grass
Slowly she makes her way across the lowland
Stopping from time to time she searches her surroundings for danger
The neighbor caring for his cattle poses no immediate threat
Yet she watches and listens as she makes her way toward the pines
Only eight feet and she’ll be at the edge of my lawn
Another few feet and she’ll have the cover of the pine trees
Two rabbits eating grass on the fringe of my lawn are in her path
One more step and the rabbits startle
Fright speeds their retreat as they run for the safety of the pines
Their sudden panicked motion strikes fear into the heart of the doe
Instinctively, she rears, whirls to run away
In that same moment she realizes that it was only a couple of rabbits
Her racing pulse slowly returns to normal
She turns to continue her journey and soon reaches the smooth lawn
I continue to watch as she enters the pines
Soon after, a frightened rabbit exits the pines in full panicked flight
The rabbit disappears into the tall grass, retracing the doe’s path
The scene is finished
Turnabout is fair play

It started as a joke.  Something clever that some folks might not understand.  A concept that . . . well judge for yourself.  I created this motivational poster and posted it on this blog:

If you don’t understand the message read the number in the top line as “one-zero” not as “ten.”  It has to do with the binary number system, where the digits are 1 and 0.

I knew my sons would immediately grasp and enjoy this play on number systems.  What I didn’t know was that yin and yang in the poster would kick off a family discussion.  Within a very short time, I received yin and yang in animated gif format.

I liked this animated play on duality.  Did it stop there?  Of course not.  Anything worth doing is worth overdoing.  Right?  Right!

So, to protect the guilty I won’t name names, it wasn’t long after that another animated gif arrived in my e-mail inbox.

This one is fascinating.  At least to me it is. 🙂  I’m thinking you can’t call it yin and yang when there are three elements at work in three dimensions.  What would you call it?  Maybe yin, yang and yong?

Could we add yeng?  Four dimensions.  I remember studying that briefly in on of my math classes at the university.  Okay, mathematically we could move to four, five and beyond dimensions.  The problem comes in illustrating that graphically.  Sorry Charlie. 🙁  That won’t work.

Back to where we started–motivational posters.  I had to do this one after the recent gathering of blogger buds here at Secondary Rds Hq.

Here’s hoping your week is off to a great start.  And always remember that a day without sunshine is like . . . night. 🙄

Hooray for me!  Okay, now that I’ve written this, I think I’ll go take a nap.

See you on Monday.  Maybe.

I was recently contacted by Emma from Nature Center Magazine.  She asked if would be willing to be interviewed for her blog.  I agreed and soon received a list of questions in an e-mail.  These I answered in a reply to her.  Yesterday, she published the interview, which you can read it here.

The Interview starts this way:

Tell us what your blog is all about.

Thank you. Secondary Roads is about enjoying and appreciating life in retirement. No more board meetings, no deadlines, no more dealing with office politics and long-range commutes in heavy traffic. It’s about life on a rural dirt road, where wildlife and livestock greatly outnumber humans. It’s about happiness and contentment in solitude and in the wonderful world that is our inheritance.

Perhaps this haiku of mine sums it up best:

Alone I sit here,
Looking out upon my world.
Finding joy in all.

If you want to read the rest, follow the link above.  If you do, please leave a comment with Emma and thank her for the interview and wish her a happy birthday.  She already knows that my wife’s name is Sylvia, not Martha.  Thanks.