Birds, podcast

Chickens in the Woods and Episode 6 of my podcast tales from the other green door

53 Comments

Late afternoon, when we sit on the patio, we hear their gentle scratching as they look for tasty tidbits at the edge of the woods. We raise our glasses to the chickens: Get those ticks!

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Another Wednesday, and another episode of my podcast, Tales from the Other Green Door. In “Iris’s Flash,” Episode 6 of the story “The Wings of Luck,” Iris has a premonition of things going horribly, horribly wrong.

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Finally, on another subject…for some reason known only to the WordPress gods, I have not been getting email notices of new posts from all my lovely blogging friends. When Clif and I checked the settings on WordPress, we noticed that the box for receiving email notices was not ticked. Why? Who knows? As far as I can remember, I did not go to that setting and untick the box. Anyway, the box is now ticked, and I hope I will resume getting email notices. Fingers, toes, and everything else crossed because for me this is the best way of keeping up with everyone’s blogs.

53 thoughts on “Chickens in the Woods and Episode 6 of my podcast tales from the other green door”

  2. Remember a few posts ago you recommended a certain tea, whose name I won’t mention? I looked at the website, did not put in any contact info, nor did I order. Now I get at least 2-3 emails a day, plus popups on every media site I look at (social media, news sites etc.) for this tea company. That is the most annoyingly aggressive internet marketing I think I’ve ever seen. And as a result I absolutely will not buy that tea. It’s pretty pricey anyway. Just thought you might find this interesting. Are you inundated with ads from this company?

    1. Oh, sorry! Yes, I get a lot of ads from that company, but for whatever reason this sort of thing really doesn’t bother me. Most of the time I ignore or delete. Occasionally, I’ll take advantage of a sale, which I find about via email. Plus I love the company so much that I never mind seeing their product. When my daughter went to college, we visited a nearby store and always had a marvelous time. (This was long before we could order online, which meant it was the only way we could stock up. ) Yes, it is pricey, but even with our tiny budget, I consider it an affordable treat. Everyone of their email ads should have a place at the bottom where you can ask to be removed from their list. Sometimes the fault of too many ads lies with web browsers and privacy settings in the browser rather than the company itself. Most likely the company contracted with an ad agency, which uses information given to them by Google to target ads. (I learned this from my computer geek husband.) Again, sorry! They really are an excellent company.

  3. The chickens belong to your neighbor, I presume. I’d love to have some to help get rid of ticks and slugs, but unfortunately, we have a fox family denning nearby.

  4. Possums also eat ticks, and foxes are not a threat to them. Perhaps people should start keeping Possums. As for WP, they are a constant source of aggravation.

  7. Chicken in the woods is the name of a fungus so as a fungus fan I was slightly disappointed to find that this post was about chickens.

  8. Those are healthy-looking chickens… must be finding some good scratch! I wondered about mushrooms in the title, too, but I know it isn’t the season for them. 😉

  9. I wonder if I am getting my usual emails about blogs I subscribe too, it seems very quiet out there, thanks for the tip, I’ll check.

    1. Thanks, Derrick! Hope I don’t have to resubscribe too many times. I am finding that I have suddenly become unsubscribed to blogs I have been following for years. What the heck!

  11. I miss my chickens but the foxes round here are too greedy! Sorry to hear that you are not getting notifications. WordPress is not very user friendly is it?

      1. Isn’t it lovely to have supportive friends all over the world (well the English speakers at least) even if we never meet in person.

  12. I have spent hours and hours in chat with WordPress lately. Problems started with the latest update to the new editor, but in the process of ruling out everything under the sun, I decided my 7-year-old laptop needed to be replaced. Fingers and toes crossed that it solves all the issues.

  13. I have seen several people mentioning that they are finding themselves unsubscribed from blogs they follow and noticed a few of my followers resubscribing so it seems to be a general problem. You’re the first to mention the emails, but I bet it is related. I have my head in my hand as I write.

    My sweetheart tried following the WordPress instructions so he could sell his new book from his site, which is supposed to be possible, but the fixed wording is such a horrible mess we have given up on the idea. Anyone buying a book would have to agree to a monthly subscription they will manage via their WordPress account (which they have to agree to open if they don’t already have one) in the small print. Then above and below it says one-off purchase. Any marketeer giving the text a glance would know it wasn’t suitable.

    1. What. The. Heck. Here is how we get around WordPress’s sales snaggle. Our sales site—HinterlandsPress.com—is self-hosted and not part of WordPress.com. As a result we can use plug-ins, shopping cart, whatever. We feature our books on Notes from the Hinterland, but the links go through to our HinterlandsPress site for selling. We use SquareUp.com for charge card processing. The only reason I stick with WordPress.com for my blog is because of the wonderful blogging community, which has been so supportive, entertaining, and illuminating. Finally, what is your sweetheart’s book?

      1. Thanks for the info, Laurie. He uses SquareUp at lectures but WordPress (the dot com version) doesn’t accept that. They quoted a great amount of money to upgrade to something better, but he wasn’t envisioning selling that many books. It just seemed a good way of getting a few signed copies out, given there’s a pandemic on, and given they promote it to us as an option I thought we should try. I agree entirely with your characterisation of the community but in truth he doesn’t engage with it much at all, so it would be not as much loss to him. Self-hosted is no doubt the way to go for the future, but you may find I trouble you with an email if it comes to that! His book is called Maverick Gardeners (Mississippi Press).

  14. Don’t you just LOVE these Word Press problems?? You’d think they would make things easy for us, knowing most aren’t “techy” (nor do they want to be!) Hope you can get it resolved soon, Laurie!

    1. WordPress can be a real pain in the tail. The issue is now resolved. Thank the computer gods. And my husband Clif. Today’s post will explain how it was fixed. Now, what will those WordPress imps do next?

  15. I went through similar problems last year. I wasn’t receiving email notifications of new posts. I had a chat with a WP person who sorted it out for me. It wasn’t on my end; it was that others had somehow unchecked that little box that says “Email, yes!” or some such. Have you consulted the WP gurus? I’ve always found them helpful and patient, especially in live chat.

    I mis-read your title as ‘chickens of the woods’ and thought you’d been out foraging for mushrooms!

  16. WP sometimes rolls out changes which nuke settings and may delete comments. It seems to be an unfortunate side effect of programming of this sort..

    I enjoyed your latest installment, “Wings of Luck”, Laurie. Looking forward to the next one!

  17. Enjoying the podcast and your visiting neighbors! Many people have commented over the changes that they were going to quit blogging and I’ve thought I’ve been missing old favorites and now I need to check my settings.

  19. I went and ordered 2 books—both for gardeners. One is coming to my house so I can read it with my husband before sending it away to my sister in law. Maverick Gardeners sounds like a fun book!

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