Steve and Judy's Travels!

Lesser Goldfinch.

Judy and Me.  That has been our mantra since we were children.  That was our pledge to each other, lying on the beach staring into each other’s eyes, when we were still teenagers, and innumerable times since.  Why 80?  Because the words Old and Eighty flowed, and anyway, old and eighty was so far out it was essentially the end of time, right?

Well, here I am today, the first day of my eightieth year and we’re both thinking, wait a minute.  Eighty is not that old.  It certainly isn’t the end of time.  We’re going to need a new mantra.

Walking in the wilderness, we come across tracks.

Wolves and large dog tracks can be difficult to tell apart.  Dog tracks tend to have a little larger spacing between the toes and the central pad.  I don’t think we have any Mexican Gray Wolves here though, so I would guess this to be a dog or coyote track.  Surely canine because we wouldn’t see any claws on a feline.

For determining dog or coyote, dog tracks have an overall round shape.  Coyote tracks have a more oblong shape.

This looks pretty round overall to me.  And this has a large triangular central pad.  Coyote central pads tend to be smaller and not so triangular.  Dog tracks can often be a reckless mess as they run about sniffing and investigating everything.  Wolves and coyotes tend to be more down to business and travel in a straighter line.  Can’t tell that from just a couple tracks though.

I’m guessing that in this instance someone before me had a big dog along with them for a hike.

It totally died and we cut it all the way back to the ground.

Then it showed a sign of life so we left it alone to see what it would do.

It grew back.

And after being gone all summer, we come home to this…

December/January.  It will be time to whack it back down again.  Maybe only knee high this time though.

Both homeowners decided that solar power would be a good idea.

I suspect that they each spent the about same amount on the infrastructure that makes the panels work and ties them into the house’s electrical system.  From there, one went max, one went mini.  I wonder what the factors were that sent each their own direction.