This weekend, I guess that means yesterday, I was busy taking pictures of my backyard birds as they bounced around in the beech tree near our feeders.
This is a very polular location. You have to wait in line to get the best stuff.
I loved the colors, the tree still hanging onto her leaves even though we are well into November now.
Sometimes the little bird feeder is especially busy and the wait is long.
It wasn’t warm outside, not like it had been through most of October, but it was still a nice, if slightly dreary, day.
I was shooting the goldfinch, but look who dropped in below.(White-striped sparrow)
I spent some of the day on Saturday painting Christmas cards to be sent to folks in nursing homes. Nothing too complicated, just simple cards painted in the hope they made someone smile.
The ten.
The goal was to get 10 painted over the weekend and mailed on Monday. Christmas comes so early when you have to get your stuff off to folks who have to do their thing to get the cards to seniors in a timely manner.
Folded, I’ll write a little note inside each of them and then send them off to the card coordinator on Monday.
I haven’t felt very Christmas-y this fall. I procrastinated on painting the cards until it was almost too late. I thought maybe I’d skip the whole Christmas card thing this time.
People ignore us little brown birds all the time too.
I haven’t put the lights up outside either. I usually put lights on one tree, the smallest of the spruce trees we planted so many years ago, at the corner of our lot.
This chunky little woodpecker had a hard time fitting through the feeder cage.
I use the smallest tree so that I can get lights clear up to the top if I stand on a ladder and use a long pole. It’s a lot of work and I don’t know if I’m up to it anymore.
But eventually he got his lunch. Might want to consider a smaller portion than usual though.
Still, the neighbors tell me how much they enjoy that tree when it’s lit on our dark winter nights. I enjoy it too. Somehow it makes the winter go by a little faster, or at least be a little brighter. So maybe I’ll get the lights up the next nice day we have around here.
Probably not today though. This morning I woke to our first snow of the season. Penny is not at all sure she was good with this new development.
Hey lady! I’d like a berry special please. Pronto!
But I am happy to see the trees and shrubs begin to be covered by this new white blanket. Pen and I might even go out and play in it when I finish this post.
The cardinal was unflappable by the robin’s flight.
Some of the birds are not as happy as I am to see the change in weather. But the snow makes me think that maybe I can put the lights up. Maybe I can paint a few cards for the season. Maybe I can get into the Christmas mood.
A festive red and green image in my own back yard.
Maybe I can.
You know you’re in Michigan when one day you’re working in the garden and the next you’re laughing over bird antics in the snow.
Remember when you were a kid and stores did the big Christmas in July sales? I don’t know if that happens anymore, but this 4th of July holiday weekend I was doing a lot of Christmas-y painting.
For our September silent auction at Truck Safety Coalition fundraiser.
The Truck Safety Coalition is getting ready to put on their 3rd annual fundraising dinner and silent auction. Both years we’ve done this I’ve donated 3 sets of cards, 5 in a set, to be auctioned off. This year I feel like I don’t have much new to give, though I suppose if I dig through my notes I have painted new stuff since last September.
Did these months ago and shipped them off to seniors at nursing homes.
Anyway I decide to paint at least one set of holiday cards, and I’ll be including stamps for all of the cards I donate. I don’t know that people are really sending cards and personal mail anymore, but I hope these find good homes.
Painted these this spring and sent off to seniors.
Now I’m debating. Should the next set of cards be whimsical cats and/or dogs? Or should I do flowers and birds like I usually do? Or, should I do a set of birthday cards? What do you think will get the best bids?
Many of you will be celebrating Christmas or Hanukah today.
Penny and our family want to send you warm holiday wishes today and for the rest of the year.
And we’re linking this post to Karma’s blog, where she challenges us all to post images of warmth. We can’t think of a better way to express that concept than by sharing the holidays with all of you.
Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukah, and thank you all so much for being part of our world. We’ll see you soon.
Somehow we’re headed toward the new year already. Day after tomorrow will be the first day of 2024, and nothing I can do will stop it.
Time is moving so quickly, it’s all a blur.
It hasn’t been easy, 2023, and part of me is happy enough to see it go. But it’s all moving so fast I wonder, if in a week or so, I’ll be welcoming 2025.
We all need to spend more time sitting still and listening.
It seems I blink and whole months have evaporated. I’m almost afraid to blink again.
Here’s hoping 2024, an election year in the US, encourages us to work together rather than against each other, helps us find new ways to connect with each other, and highlights the good inside so many of us.
Santa has headed back to the North Pole, now it’s on each of us to find our own joy.
I am hoping. But maybe I should just blink us into 2025.
Boy I bet you’ve been wondering where I’ve been! I know I’m probably the most important concern on your minds all the time, and in the interest of getting you to relax, I’ll bring you up to date on my adventures.
Me in my chariot.
There have been plenty.
Since it’s the holiday season I guess I should start out with my walk a week or so ago. I got to go to a park with my friend Whisky and his mom. (And my mom came too.) There were Christmas lights everywhere!
My friend Whisky-Roo and his mom.
There were lots of people and their dogs walking around and I was a pretty good girl about not barking at stuff. Even when people came out of the dark and startled me.
Sometimes I get worried that Mom isn’t paying attention to all the people walking by when she’s taking pictures.
Mom said it was pretty hard to get pictures of me looking at her cause there was so much other stuff for me to look at!
We spend way too much time sitting in front of stuff when we should be walking, Mom!
Then this week mom took me to Davis Lake Overlook Park, which is near my house. I’ve only been there one time before, and that time we walked in a different part of the park.
I think we should go down the yellow trail, Mom.
So on this walk everything was new to me. Boy I had fun sniffing. I’d go from one side of the trail to the other, nose always to the ground.
I feel like I’m wearing camouflage, Mom!I blend right in!
Mom said I did very good not being scared of being in the woods. When I was a little girl the big trees kinda scared me, but I’m a big girl now, and a lot braver.
Mom asks me to sit in front of stuff all the time.I think she needs to have an intervention.
Then guess what? My Uncle P. came to visit us! It was his first visit since I moved in. He’s so much fun! I liked him right away. A couple days ago he and Mom took me back to Davis Lake Overlook and we walked on a completely different trail there.
My Uncle Paul.
Part of it even Mom had never been on before! Mom says she might rename this park Penny’s Park. I think that’s an excellent idea.
Istay very focused on mom. When she says “OK!” I’m going in for my treat, yes sirree!
Mom says she’s still thinking about it. She says change is hard.
I think this is an excellent park and should definitely be named for me.
Anyway, we had a great walk even though it was foggy and cold. I didn’t mind that a bit of course.
I gave her my best pose down by this little pond.It’s my Christmas present to her.
I loved walking with Mom and Uncle P. They thought they’d be wearing me out so I’d be calmer when we got home. But the joke was on them - I wanted to play, play, PLAY when we got back.
They, on the other hand, needed a nap.
Never underestimate a Penny.
Silly people. They should know by now you can’t wear an Unstoppable Pretty Penny out!
Hee, hee.
Well, I might have taken a LITTLE nap.
Talk later, it’s time for me to go open my Christmas present, your Unstoppable Girl, Penny.
My mom used to say she wished the radio stations continued to play Christmas music after Christmas day. Back then you had to be in the same room as the radio in order to hear and she didn’t have time to listen before Christmas morning. She had four kids to shop and wrap for and a big holiday dinner to prepare.
She didn’t have time to enjoy the season until it was over.
The Clarkston Community Band, pictures from the audience perspective taken by my husband.
I wish she could have attended the concert our Clarkston Community Band played last Friday evening. Pretty lights and lush music shaped our theme of “Let there be Peace.”
“Bugler’s’Holidayby Leroy Anderson
I don’t think there’s a better way to get in the spirit of the season than to go to a live concert, right in your own community, performed by your friends and neighbors. The musicians might not be professionals (though sometimes they are) and the performance might not be perfect (though sometimes it is) but the spirit is real and the motivation is pure.
Friday night songs like “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year, “White Christmas” and “I’ll be Home for Christmas” got us all into the right mood. When the audience sang along on a medley of Christmas carols I had to stop playing for a moment and just listen to all those voices joined together.
Pure magic.
Santa waits in the wings
Yep, Friday night we filled that auditorium with love. Toward the end of the show lots of children came up on stage to ring jingle bells as we played “Here Comes Santa Claus” in the hope they could convince Santa to stop in for a visit. These kids were very convincing, and Santa showed up right on cue. Their faces, when they realized he was standing right behind them, were priceless.
More magic.
Excitement builds as they hope for the big guy to arrive.
And then Santa conducted our last piece of music, “Sleigh Ride,” because it’ can’t be a holiday concert without a ride through the snow behind prancing horses, even if it’s all only in our imaginations.
A perfect ending to a perfect evening.
Friday night we all came together for a moment of celebration and peace, even knowing the world is filled with unrest. We all left that night smiling and you can too. This season, check your local high school’s web page. There’s likely a holiday concert or two near you this very week. Please take time from your preparations to support those musicians. They’d love to see a full house and you’ll be glad you went.
I guarantee there will be magic bouncing off those walls.
I’d like to thank all of you who spend time reading my blog, looking at the photos and so often commenting. 2022 has been a challenging year for some of us, and it’s nice to put thoughts out into the blogosphere, as a way of therapy or just to record events.
Thank you for understanding that sometimes I write for all of us, and sometimes I write for me alone. Either way I feel your support and I appreciate it so much.
Have a peaceful or chaotic holiday, whichever you prefer and then let’s all work on making the new year extra special. I’ll be around soon, you can count on more birds, more snow, more parks, more night skies, more walks, more musings, and more adventures. I can hardly wait.
Anyway, I was reading Quaint Revival’s latest post about all the snow she’s getting over in Wisconsin, and she said it was beginning to look a lot like Christmas…which led her into thoughts about how those lyrics happened to be written and a request for someone to find out for her. Which, being a want-to-be librarian I felt compelled to do.
I think Santa is on some sort of exercise program.
She thought maybe the lyrics were written by Meredith Wilson in 1951 as he sat beside a pool, hopefully under warm skies. But Wikipedia says it probably was written in Yarmouth, and when I google that I can only find Yarmouth Maine, or Yarmouth British Columbia, neither of which sounds very warm, even in midsummer!
Looking for her Christmas gift. Or a peanut, whichever’s available.
But looking for this information did remind me that we played this very piece of holiday music at our recent concert, so I went to listen to it again. Well, actually, I went and listened to it for the first time. Music sounds very different when you’re sitting in the middle of the band than it does when sitting in the audience, and I haven’t taken time to listen to our concert until now. (I recommend listening to this with a good set of earphones…it sounds a LOT better with earbuds than just using your laptop speakers.)
Holiday music always makes things better.
Last Sunday I had a couple friends come for lunch and painting. Well, truthfully, they brought most of the lunch (roasted tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches) and most of their own painting supplies too. After we ate the yummy lunch we settled in to paint Christmas cards. It was so much fun to experiment together. Plus it increased my stock of cards waiting to be mailed out to unsuspecting friends and family. I should do this on a larger scale next year!
Seems like birds infiltrate all aspects of my life.
We have a little bit of snow, enough to make things look pretty, but not enough to interfere with driving. Not that I’m driving much. One of the benefits of retirement is not having to go out unless I want to. When it’s cold and snowing I rarely want to. And though I miss my Katie-girl soooo much, I am kind of glad to roll over in bed and go back to sleep in the dark early hours of these winter mornings.
“I used to put up with an awful lot, mama.”
Speaking of not traveling, we’re staying home this Christmas. We have had invites to holiday gatherings, but this year we just can’t quite make ourselves wander out. Twenty Twenty-two has been a long, hard year for us. Instead of going out this year I’ll fix some of the family mealtime favorites, and we’ll snuggle up on the couch to enjoy the quiet.
I look forward to seeing these guys every year.
Though it might not be entirely quiet. We’re going to have a houseguest for awhile, a little 10 year old doggie will be staying with us while his mom is visiting family out of town. We’ve practiced him being here without his mom a couple of times and I think he’s going to settle in, but he sure does love his mom.
“Does this peanut make my head look flat?”
I saw a movie trailer this morning for something staring Tom Hanks. There was a year, a long time ago, when my husband and I watched several movies, unusual for us, realizing later that all of them were Tom Hanks movies. You know, Castaway, Green Mile, Saving Private Ryan. This movie is called something like A Man called Otis. While I was watching the trailer something felt familiar…and then I remembered one of my favorite books, A Man Called Ove, by Fredrik Backman, about an elderly man who’s quiet life is interrupted by a family that moves in next door. I think the movie is based on this book, and I think I really need to go see it. Maybe during the Christmas holiday week, as a gift from me to me.
Sometimes Christmas feels like this.
I did get out to feed the birds at Kensington this morning. A lot of the photos in this post are from that visit. I didn’t look at the weather, or even the temperature before I left home when it was still dark. By the time I got to the park the wind was blowing the snow sideways. Not surprisingly no one else was around.
“I don’t eat out of hands, lady. But if you’ve got a spare peanut I’d enjoy it.”
I went out to the boardwalk to see if I could entice the Queen to my hand, but she wasn’t having any of it. In fact none of the birds were willing to get too close, though they were happy enough to come to the railing if I’d leave my treats and back off.
“Not today, lady, not today.”
I wandered in the woods a little, to get out of the wind, and even there things were very quiet. And then I stood still and waited.
“My turn!” “NO IT’S NOT! It’s MY turn!”
And soon enough I heard the flutter of wings and saw, through the trees, the fast moving little bodies of hungry birds. So fun. Even though my hands were freezing and my toes were freezing I stood around out there for a long time.
“Hey Lady! I’m waiting patiently over here!”
I stood there just smiling and watching them, all puffed up against the cold.
“Puffing up helps you keep warm lady, you should try it.”
Merry Christmas to my little birds, and to all of you too. May you all enjoy this holiday season, in whatever way seems right for you this year.
Change Is Hard 