Mowed a bunch of weeds and stuff. Going to probably do some more on New Year's.

Might as well. Are you working?

Yep.

I finally ran the tractor over to the north side, and discovered a half dozen boxes this afternoon that someone ordered around December 8th that had been sitting in the weather for 6 weeks.

Mostly books and pens, and a clipboard. We've had two major snowfalls and melting events and rainfall and many freeze-thaw cycles since all those boxes were left there.

They just left them there?  Isn’t there a designated place for drop offs?

Yes they just left them there, evidently just inside the fence line I think.

I have a non-running car that I have sitting on blocks just inside the west driveway with a big professionally made sign that states put deliveries in the trunk of the car.

They haven't adequately trained the proles yet.

Maybe they aren’t allowed to use a car as a mail drop.  

Too many people are not very bright.
When my furnace quit working and I called the gas co and later repairmen to come and check it out I said the door bell was broke so they should ring the cow bell on the doorknob. I had 5 different people show up. Furnace in basement. Ground level door. Not one person rang cow bell. Maybe they never heard of cows having bells?

They didn’t know what a cow bell is.

Guess not??

FedEx and UPS have been putting packages in that car trunk for at least 4 years.

About 3 years ago, while getting stuff for the total eclipse expedition, a driver left a package somewhere else. I found it after 2 days, sopping wet and waterlogged, simply because I had called the seller, asked for them to try and trace the package, and the conclusion was everyone was certain it was actually delivered to my place.

Then another package delivered by the same carrier arrived, and it was set in the driveway, in plain view of the car and the sign that explicitly said to put packages in the trunk of the car to protect things from weather and animals.

I took a picture of the packages and the sign in the same frame, then used GIMP to enlarge an inset of the sign and of the package pile, and emailed that photograph in full resolution to the manager of that UPS office, and also to his boss, and thanks to some sleuthing, his boss's boss.

I had also used the text tool to add the street address AND the exact GPS coordinates carried out to the thousandth of a minute, just the way coordinates are posted on-line to geocaches

With the picture, I also cloned the one with the insets and made it into a meme and sent that to the bosses. I had added an arrow pointing at the text of the sign, which was clearly readable in the photograph. And the caption said "Reading is Fundamental. Please learn how."

At least FedEx has gotten the packages into the proper place consistently. Some other carriers get it right about 95% of the time.

I think I'm going to cut out a street address number and name out of 8 inch wide steel plate, and then weld that to the gate posts. For the north gate, I'm going to add a steel cutout sign that has a big arrow, and says "package deliveries - west gate"

Since now I know someone with access to a computer controlled plasma cutter, I'm tempted to get a nearly 4 foot x 4 foot piece of maybe 3/16 inch steel plate and actually have them cut out a line drawing of a map of the property with the street names and gates marked, and a "x marks the spot" where the car is.

To make it extremely obvious, the next step is to take some weatherproof LED strips and mount them on some metal strips mounted just behind the main sheet of steel. I can actually use angle iron and butt weld that to the rear surface of the steel map, then once it's cooled, sandblasted, and painted, mount the LED strips and have a white background for the visible steel strips behind the cutouts.

This makes a black sign with white letters and markings, that is lit up like a Jack-O-lantern smile with the LEDs after dark.

I weld that to the corner gate posts right at the corner of the property where two roads converge, so a delivery driver can't miss it.

That also means that EMTs can't miss it and can find the proper entrance in a medical emergency because, of course, we're not getting younger, and estate planning and preservation of assets for distribution to heirs is far easier if one's freshly deceased corpse is hauled away promptly when the time comes (or one makes that final ride to expire in the ambulance or E.R.), rather than leaving a $25,000 hazmat cleanup task that comes out of one's liquidated estate.

Of course the best estate planning scenario is to kick the bucket without an ambulance ride and that huge emergency room "exit tax", but without the decomposed remains removal and hazmat cleanup "exit tax" being incurred either.