Where to Draw the Line?

6FPS V7#8: August 11, 2025

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Welcome to the new issue of 6FPS.

Welcome to August, as we start the transition from summer to fall. July was a really busy month, with lots of little projects going on, most of which aren’t worth talking about.

Summer is an incredible slow time for birding most of the time — there is an interesting species about an hour from here I’ve been meaning to go chase, but spring migration is long finished, the local birds have been busy nesting and creating the next generation, and there just aren’t a lot of interesting things happening to go out and look at. There was one unusual bird here in the county — a Trumpeter Swan that chose not to migrate (which, I’ll note, often suggests its injured or sick, but sometimes they just decide it’s fine here) and has been hanging out about 30 minutes from here with one of the local flocks of Canada Geese. It took me four tries, but I finally found it — sitting on a mud bank right next to the road, sound asleep, along with a dozen geese. Never even left the car.

But… the first shorebirds are starting to show up, and they’re the first migrators we see in fall migration. I need to figure out how best to chase them as they pass through.

Summer Birds

That said, the local birds here have been doing well. Here on the property, I can confirm successful nesting by the Dark Eyed Juncos, Spotted Towhees, Mourning Doves, Black-capped Chickadees and American Robins. Likely breeders (we haven’t confirmed nests or young by sight) include Western Tanager, Purple Finch, American Goldfinch, Black headed Grosbeak, Stellar’s Jay, Chestnut Backed Chickadees, Red-Breasted Nuthatch and Song Sparrow — for each of these we’ve seen pairs and likely breeding behavior. And possible breeders include Swainson’s Thrush, Western Flycatcher, Bewick’s Wren, Anna’s and Rufous Hummingbird, and possible Pileated Woodpecker.

Other birds we’re seeing irregularly include Pine Siskins, Northern Flickers, House Finch, Band Tailed Pigeon,

And we have recently seen evidence of a Cooper’s Hawk visiting (aka a pile of Spotted Towhee feathers and also evidence of an ex- Mourning Dove), and after a few months of silence the recent night calling of a Barred Owl. And the other day, the first feeder visit in a long time by a Downy Woodpecker. One regular visitor in previous years we’re not seeing is the Hairy Woodpecker, which is disappointing.

So we have eleven species we know are raising young on the property, and another five likely doing so, and about 20 summer species we’re seeing at least weekly around here. Hard to complain about that.

On the critter side, we have two female raccoons, one with two kids and one with three, and a few others hanging about. Mom visits the ground feeder (we don’t encourage this, but it’s not practical to support the ground feeding birds and not tolerate some donations to the raccoons and squirrels). A fun aspect of this is mom brings the kids in and she comes in to eat, and the kids crawl into the water fountain next to the deck and cavort for a while. We also have three black-tailed deer that have moved in for the summer, a three point (work in progress) male and two females. One of the females just brought her fawn in for the first time the other day.

One day, we saw the male deer in the veggie garden area, happily eating the ripening raspberries. He did some nibbling on Laurie’s beds but didn’t evidently find anything he liked. The veggie area is surrounded by a fence, but it’s only four feet high, so we knew it wasn’t going to be deer proof but that’s the first time something other than a squirrel has been caught in there. He did that three times and, having finished off the berries, he stopped jumping in.

We’re also seeing a coyote fairly regularly, and the usual packs of Grey and Douglas Squirrels. And while we aren’t seeing bears, we have had one bear wander through three times since January.

I’m really loving living in a more rural environment. We have a number of food producing things around the property — wild berries, fruit trees, etc — and we generally leave them to the locals rather than harvest them. And we are rewarded by having a nice, diverse population of things to enjoy sharing this place with.

Coffee Time

I continue to be unhappy with the quality of decaffeinated tea; I found one blend that was — well, acceptable, mostly — but honestly, it still didn’t have much taste. I’ve also found a decaf green tea that’s okay (better than the black) but still not what I’d call great.

Ultimately, I’ve come to the conclusion that decaf tea is mostly for people looking for decaf, not people who really like tea. It’s been quite disappointing that the best I could find was well, drinkable, and rather expensive.

So I got thinking…. it’s a lot easier to find decent decaf coffee than tea, so maybe I should switch to coffee, right? So I pulled myself together coffee making gear, picked up some nice decaf, and decided to see how that went.

Some of you have already guessed how well this worked: the reality is that “decaffeinated” does not imply “no caffeine”, and decaf coffee generally has more than decaf tea does. I had a few cups of coffee on day one of this experiment, and yes, towards the end of the day I started feeling like crap.

And even more fun, I went to bed, and then spent the next 90 minutes not sleeping, finally getting up again because I realized I was wired. Looking back on what I drank, it was maybe 50 milligrams of caffeine, which is not a large amount, but having gone close to free of the stuff for a few months, I got wired. I did ultimately get to sleep around 5AM, and I felt off for a couple of days, and then things were fine again. And the coffee maker got rehomed and the experiment ended quickly.

The idea sure seemed to make sense to me, but in retrospect, it was never going to be a good idea…

What I ended up doing was going to plan C — which was to give up on the decaf teas completely, and shift over to a Peppermint Herbal (by Stash, if you’re curious). And while I miss the taste of a good black or green tea, it is a very acceptable thing to be drinking in the morning and during the day, and it makes a really nice iced tea as well. I’ll be experimenting with some other zero caffeine herbals as iced tea options as well, but I finally have a cup of tea that I look forward to again, rather than just accept.

Back to the Shop

One of the bigger projects I started in July was my getting back into the shop. To be honest, when the vertigo was not under control and getting worse, the thought of having an episode while operating a machine with a really sharp, fast spinning hunk of steel was — disconcerting. Without consciously thinking about it, over time I de-prioritized working in the shop until it more or less stopped happening.

Now that things are well controlled — as long as I don ‘t do stupid things like experiment with how much coffee I can drink in a day — I’ve been thinking it’s time to get back at it. In July, I actually did. So far, that has mostly been me digging into and organizing the inevitable clutter that you get in a space that isn’t actively being used, and starting into some of the “I need to do this one of these days” projects I’ve been avoiding.

One “big” project was replacing the storage shelves I’d put in there. I realized the thing was taking up too much space, and worse, wasn’t on wheels so I couldn’t move it. I ended up replacing the 24x48 shelves with a 24x36 cart on good casters; still large enough for my air filter to live on top but taking up a lot less space, and if I need to move it around to get clearance, I can. And with a bit of thoughtful organization, all of the stuff that was in the larger shelves fit on the cart. That frees up space so I can better do some planned reconfiguration of the space.

I also got a proper cart for the 3D printer. When I first got it I put it on a nice, small work cart, but I quickly realized it needed an enclosure, and to do that, it needed to be on a larger surface. To fix that in the short term I added a white board to the top of the cart, but that wasn’t as stable as I liked and honestly, the whole thing looked stupid. And worse, it was now deep enough (another 24” deep cart) that it was always in the way.

So, new cart, some drawers for “stuff” and rearranging its location so it’s no longer blocking our paths and I’m much happier with how things are going. The big shelves got moved out to the shed, where I’ve finally started an area for long term storage of stuff we don’t need to get at often, and so the last week or so has been a series of shifts in the shop pulling those out an storing them in the shed bay. So it’s been a nice, productive month doing what are ultimately kind of unimportant but useful tasks.

Property Spam

If there was one thing I didn’t expect when we bought our current property here in Washington, it was spam. Because we actually bought two properties, one that our house is on, and the adjacent property that has never been built on. Each is a bit over two acres.

And a few times a month, I get a phone call or a text message from someone asking to buy that vacant property. The phone calls I can mostly ignore, but the texts are pretty annoying. I also get paper letters offering to buy the land.

We have zero interest in selling; one things that attracted use to this place was the extended unbuilt area around it, which the previous owners owned and chose not to build on, either.

This month’s Birthday Build

Laurie got me a Lego kit to build for my birthday. One of my favorites so far!

See you next issue!