Here is the last photo of June 2025. Happy July.
The lilies are beginning to bloom and bring color to the backyard garden.
I am following up with Bushboy’s Last on the Card for June post.
Today is going to be an amzing day, so I’d better jump up, jump in, and seize the day. Making the Days Count, one day at a time. Finding color everywhere I look!
What’s the color in your backyard?
W^2 or W squared for Wordless Wednesday, June 25, 2025
Happy Wednesday! Our heat wave has broken and it is a bit cooler this morning. Last night thunderstorms rolled through dropping almost an inch (2.54 cm) of rain overnight.
Normally on summer morning, I’d be out at the ‘summer office’ listening to the birds and feeling the gentle breeze as the world around me awakens, but the ‘office’ is wet and damp, so I’ll wait for another morning, or late evening to enjoy the backyard.
I am going to enjoy the inside office of the breakfast table and my office desk in the basement for today and maybe the ‘summer office’ will be available tomorrow. Who knows? But today could possible be the best day ever, so I’d better jump up, jump in, and seize the day. Making the days COUNT, one day at a time, getting things done wherever I work.
Does your workspace vary? Where do you find yourself working today?
It’s the first FULL day of summer in the northern hemisphere. It’s where I live and where most of the world’s population lives also – it’s approximately a 90-10 spilt! It’s largely due to equity of land distribution – 68-32 spilt in favor of the northern hemisphere.
But this isn’t a geography lesson.
I saw something recently that explained one of the reasons for the decline in cognitive ability in aging adults (and that’s me) is when we stop creating.
MtDC is fifteen years old this summer going on sixteen and I’d like to see it continue to grow.
I have a blogger friend who ‘s Saturday post is always – Photos of the Week. Each week Wynne includes a sign she has come across in her travels during the week and it is always a good message. She peppers it with images from her family’s weekI look. I forward to her posts each Saturday morning.
W^2 or W squared for Wordless Wednesday, June 18, 2025
This Wednesday finds me home in my summer office praying the birds I have neglected, return to my feeders. Yesterday, both my wife and I drove home from the lake after spending almost two weeks away. The yard needed mown, the feeders were empty, and there was a package waiting on the doorstep when I arrived.
Summer always finds my days full and it is difficult to wrap my mind around the idea that in three weeks I will be in London. When I traveled to Europe fifteen years ago, I carried my laptop and blogged from my hotel room at the end of the day or wrote at the beginning of the following day. In all I posted six times, with a seventh the day I returned. I think my mom and wife were the only readers at that point. When I go back to see what I wrote fifteen years ago, I cringe, and realize I have grown as a writer. I also realize that my posts have not ‘aged’ well. The photos need to be updated and refreshed and I’ll do that later – but I’ll be using my Mac.
This trip I plan to write and post, but I think I can use my iPad and I am giving it a whirl this morning. I was successful last summer with a post on the trip home from California and a post from 35,000 feet. So this post will be entirely produced with the iPad! Continue reading W^2 – peonies
It’s Father’s Day and I have already gotten my gifts. We are at the lake, my daughter is upstairs sleeping after, our son is home with his family after travelling home yesterday, and the dogs are curled up sleeping. It is a quiet Sunday morning, and the lake is still, cool, and overcast.
It’s been almost sixteen years since my father died. For me Father’s Day is a quiet day best spent with family. This year, it’s special as it is my son’s first Father’s Day.
Family at the lake
This past week my son and his family visited us at the lake. It was exciting, fun, and a whirlwind having twin grandies and their parents join us at the lake for several days. It was fun hearing them babble, cry, crawl, eat, and grow.
I remember his first visit as an infant and our daughter’s a few years later. We enjoyed their visit and celebrated several firsts – especially our first three generations photo!
Father’s Day
My daughter gave me my Father’s Day gift a few weeks ago. It is a hummingbird feeder with a camera. I opened the box this past week, installed it, and have been enjoying the feeder and its images since.
I am thankful to my blogging friend Margaret for encouraging me to be a birder with her book’s post from April 2018. I did read the book Where the Poppies Blow, and I am excited to return to Europe this summer and travel through the battlefields of northern France and the Netherlands. Also, I am thankful to the COVID lockdown for accelerating my curiosity and wonder for birds.
Sometimes we simply need a gentle push and I’ve been enjoying since. Continue reading Three things for a Father’s Day morning
W^2 or W squared for Wordless Wednesday, June 12, 2025
Portage means to change from one waterway to another; more specifically it means to unload one boat and transfer the goods to another boat.
Merriam-Webster’s definition of “portage” #makingthedayscount #newhome #growing https://t.co/peFpZmXu4Z
— Clay Watkins (@makingdayscount) June 11, 2025
During the annual canoe race in late July, the racers must navigate the Ausable River and ‘portage’ their canoes at several spots along the course. For the racers, it means they have reached a dam along the river, and they must climb out of the canoe, pull their canoe out of the river, and carry the canoe to the river below the dam. Then climb back in and continue paddling down river.
Portage is also used as a name for a city. There are five cities or towns named Portage in the United States – Indiana, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Michigan.
It also is our daughter’s new home. Last weekend we moved her from her college home to a new home in Portage, Michigan. She took a job and needed a place to live; she chose well. It’s a great apartment (much better than my first) and it has a nice patio for the dogs where they can sniff and explore. It’s also a nice place to sit and sip coffee while watching the dogs – Fern and Nova.
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This morning finds us at the lake with our son and his family – the grandies. It’s their first visit and it’s the first time we’ve had three generations at the lake in long time. Our daughter will join us late Friday night or early Saturday morning for a full three generational photo. I can’t wait!
It’s going to be an exciting day with maybe a visit to the beach and hopefully some photos. So, I’d better jump up, jump in, and seize the day or I’ll be left behind. Making the days Count, one day at a time, while watching the dogs, the grandies, or a sunset.
What are you going to watch today?
Summer break, my annual audition for retirement began yesterday after I finished getting my classroom cleaned, organized (that might be a stretch), and stored for the summer cleaning and learning season.
This year’s edition is seventy days long. It will be filled with family, grandies, travel, baseball, creativity, and dogs. I can’t wait.
TRAVEL and GRANDIES
This summer my wife and I will be traveling to Europe for a two-week vacation starting in London, then Wales, back to London, then to Paris, and finishing in Amsterdam before returning home. I am excited and nervous all at the same time. This trip is similar to the one I took fifteen years ago to take my father’s cremains home, except this time we will return our step-mother’s cremains to where she wanted to spend eternity. Like that trip to honor my father, I plan to blog along the way.
Summer would be summer without a few weeks as the lake. This year we will host our grandies for the first time. We are excited and looking forward to the summer with the family.
CREATIVITY
Continue reading Three things for the first day of summer break 2025
W^2 or W squared for Wordless Wednesday, April 2, 2025
It is Wednesday and I am by the ocean for a week. I haven’t thought about school in a couple of days or grading papers. The third quarter finished a couple of weeks ago and I was able to square up the gradebook for the work submitted for the fourth, and final quarter, on the last Friday of March before spring break began.
I was reminded of how far I have come in mid-March when we said goodbye to Ivy, our faithful and loving Brittany Spaniel. Ivy was a puppy when I started blogging at MtDC and I know I have written about her adventures with us many times, too many to link. Ivy celebrated her fifteenth birthday in February, and we would’ve celebrated her fifteenth ‘gotcha day’ tomorrow. She was an amazing dog, and she taught us to be better humans.
B, O, Fern, and I surrounded her for her final breath and W had said his goodbye the night before. It was a sad day, but it was time for her and us.
It has been quiet in the house since, and I miss drinking coffee with her in the morning. She was an amazing dog, and we miss her, we miss her a lot.
Today is going to be a great day, an amazing day, in fact. I know it and I can feel it, so I’d better jump up, jump in, and seize the day. Making the Days Count, one day at a time, enjoying the sound of the surf, the wind, and sun. It’s what Ivy would want.
How are you making your days count?
I created the graphics below for my daily reflections…. each is from a different time we had with her…..
W^2 or W squared for Wordless Wednesday, August 14, 2024
It is Day 72 with four remaining before it’s back to school.
Time flies.
It’s six months with three more before my son’s twins arrive, we can bearly (sic) wait. Always making the days count.
This past week has been a flurry of activity, and the next four days will be, too. This past weekend was our daughter-in-law’s baby shower, and we helped our son get his yard and house ready. It was a beautiful day, the yard looked wonderful, and it was a great day to celebrate the coming arrival of our first grandchildren. Exciting.
Time flies.
Today we are back to Michigan and the lake to help our daughter move into the house she and some friends have rented for her senior year.
Time flies.
Today is going to be an amazing day. I know it and I can feel it so, I’d better jump up, jump in, and seize the day. Making the Days Count, one day at a time making time, because time flies.
How has your time been flyin’?
I could hear the gentle rain tapping on the roof this morning when I got up before Ivy. Yesterday the weather made a turn. It’s cooler today after several days of warm, sometimes hot, muggy stillness of the dog days of August.
Later this morning, we will be going home. It is both exciting and bittersweet.
Ivy was a puppy when I first started blogging, now she’s a senior dog, the senior dog. She doesn’t move like she once did, which is a blessing because I can remember many times trying to find her when she wandered away from the cottage and took off into the woods. We’ve learned a few things since those early days, but Fern is a lot like Ivy, but she will return when you call her. We have an Invisible Fence at home and both dogs know the boundary. At the lake we’ve been using a training collar, but that doesn’t contain either of them, especially Fern who has been known to return home with a deer leg, or two. It is bittersweet watching Ivy age, but it’s heartwarming seeing how Fern interacts with her. (NOTE – edited, last sentence added after publishing)
