Monday morning, when Caz went into the front yard, I followed and did my usual check to see if there was anything to harvest in my little garden. I normally stand on the south side of the raised bed, since that's closest to the house and shortest walk.

Nada. Lots of leaves, quite a few blossoms, but no veggies.

One of the squash plants has been making a break for it, squirming over the north wall to freedom. It obviously didn't realize it was leaping out of the raised bed frying-pan into the fire of rabbit and deer country.

The travelling squash was not fruiting, but when I looked back into the garden from the other side, there was a zuke the size of my forearm and a half dozen cukes eager to come inside and meet my cooking utensils.

In retrospect, it makes sense. The leaves are all stretching and spreading to catch the south sun, so the canopy of leaves is all I see from that side.

But, from the north side, I'm looking behind all the surface glitter and seeing how things really work.

As an engineer, I should have thought of this sooner. The interesting parts you want to look at are always hidden behind the chrome.

This was also a week for scrap-wood projects.

I decided to move my four foot-tall stacks of books-to-be-read to the utility shelves in the living room. This meant I needed book-ends.

Now, Amazon could have them in my door tomorrow, and a run to Staples would fill the need today, but I had a 3-inch wide strip of 1/8 inch hardboard leftover from a project, and the not-water-damaged section of MDF board I replaced after a water event.

A few minutes with the table saw and screwdriver, and I had new book-ends and the books are neatly arranged where they can stare at me accusingly while I'm doing anything other than read them.

After using up some scrap wood for this project, I ended up with more pieces of leftover scrap.

According to physicists, every action creates entropy: little bits of energy that are too small to kick an electron into a higher orbit.

Leftover scraps are the entropy of the workshop, getting smaller and more numerous each time you cut off a little for this project or that.

Eventually, they get too small to be used for anything.

Then they're ready for the fireplace, where they get transformed to heat and more entropy.