Skunks and Tomatoes

In the middle of the night last week I smelled a skunk in the yard. They often come around in the summertime and dig through our compost bin and yard. I didn't think anything of it until I went out the next morning to take a look at the garden. 

Wow! Something had been munching on our ripening tomatoes. Would a skunk do that? Well, I had to check the internet to find an answer. I was surprised. The answer was yes. Skunks will eat tomatoes. The next night, the skunk came back and munched on another almost ripe tomato. So, we harvested all the nearly ripe tomatoes and brought them in to ripen in the house.

There's the second skunk-damaged tomato just before we tossed it into the compost bin. We're hoping these almost-ripe tomatoes will taste as sweet as they usually do when they ripen on the vine. There are more out there that will need early harvesting soon. 

We won't let those little stinkers win! LOL! Have you ever had critters eat your tomatoes? We'd love to know.

In other garden news, we harvested the biggest potato we've ever grown.

That's our veggie harvest for one evening. Yum!

Time For A New Printer

I had a plan. I was going to pick out a photo of Roger that I had taken on one of our walks and hikes and print it for his birthday card. I make a birthday card for him every year. I found a photo that I loved. I went to print it. The printer would only print it black and white. It was crazy. So, I thought I'd experiment with other photos to see if the same problem would occur.

I chose this photo to print, an iridescent cloud I had photographed just a few days ago. It had some nice soft colors and plenty of blue. This is what the printer saw.

I took a screenshot of the print mode. That's a black and white pic of an iridescent cloud in a blue blue sky. Mmmm? 

So then we turned on our very, very old PC. Thought we'd give that a try to see if the printer would print in color from that old machine since they are of the same ancient era. Why yes it did. It printed in color. Mmmm?

So, we surmised that our brand new MacBook Air system updates made our old printer a dinosaur in this new age of computers.

Definitely time for a new printer now.... or I could start buying actual birthday cards. Hah!

PS Thank you all for your kind and thoughtful birthday wishes to Roger. We loved them. The best part of the internet!

It's My Birthday

 We make a big deal out of birthdays at the beginning of each decade. More so in early life and in old age it seems. the middle parts of life kinda slide by with less fuss. So here I am entering my eighties. I don’t feel any different than I did yesterday or the day before that. In some ways I am still every age I have been so far. My body does though give me evidence of my age with aches and pains and lately strange feelings in my head.

I am partial to Buddhist philosophy. part of which is stuff about living many lives, waking to a bigger picture with each life if things go well. Not sure what I think about that. I do though appreciate the advice to live the life we have with awareness of each moment. To be fully present in each moment.

One of my favorite philosophers, Allen Ginsberg, here demonstrates mindfulness

  

An Agave Update

 It's been more than a month since I photographed Roger with the Agave flower. This is what the Agave looked like when we first saw it at the very end of May.

Then by mid-June it looked like this.

So out on our walk on Saturday I photographed Roger with the Agave once more.

We think it has gotten as tall as it's going to get, and the buds are starting to flower. Now we're waiting to see what happens next. 

We never did get to see what happened to this blooming Agave we saw in Captitola years ago. So, we'll finally see. You know we'll keep you posted.

Pretty Clouds At Last!

Just that simple pretty sky moment. Blues skies and cumulus clouds (or not, I can't remember cloud names anymore, so I picked this one. LOL.)

I see funny things in the second photo. An "X" or a frowning face. How about you? See anything? 

Not much else going on. I did put up a post on Facebook completely unrelated to these sky photos that said: 

I hope you'll click on the above pic. It sparked a lot of comments. I was surprised that many people did not have morning prayer in public school the way I did back in the 1950s and early 1960s. Now I'm wondering if any of my blogging friends recited and read prayers in public school. 

In the face of everything going on these days, a beautiful sky day is the best balance and hope for sanity.