We hope you all have a fabulous holiday, however you celebrate it. Our wish for everyone is that 2021 is a more peaceful, healthier year. We’ll do our part by wearing our mask and keeping our distance for as long as it takes, even though we are very sad not to be with family this year.
We are grateful for all your friendships, and look forward to continuing the adventure soon!
Happy cuteness from Michigan!
Christmas is right around the corner, and people are talking about how they’re not ready, have so much more to do, cooking, shopping, wrapping. I smile in sympathy but I don’t really get it. Especially this year.
This barn and other outbuildings are on land that is for sale, zoned commercial. So it won’t be here for much longer. I’m glad I got an image to preserve it.
Even without covid my family is small and doesn’t travel that much. We don’t do so much for Christmas anymore, though Thanksgiving is a big deal. I mailed the couple of boxes I needed to more than a week ago. I bought the ingredients for our simple Christmas supper last week.
The barns on this particular barn hunt came in many colors.
The thing I’m looking forward to most is a Christmas nap. I wonder if that shows my age? Still, it can get a little sad when the world seems hyped up and you aren’t. So yesterday I decided to go out looking for a few barns. Sort of a comfort photo hunt of sorts.
Not something you see every day, a blue barn.
And along the way I listened to XM radio, station 73, Traditional Holiday, humming along to music that my folks would have listened to back in the 50s, and some that we listed to in the 60s and 70s too.
I liked the red tractor in front of this red barn. I turned around to get it.
I remember my mom commenting that she wished they played Christmas music for awhile after the big day because she didn’t have time before it to listen. I feel lucky that I have all the time in the world to enjoy these oldies.
I want to go back when the light is better and see if I can figure out what was painted on this barn.
People like Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Mel Torme, Dean Martin, Nat King Cole, Eartha Kitt, Perry Como, Bing Crosby, Peggy Lee, Rosemary Clooney and Jo Stafford, groups like The Four Seasons and The Supremes, instrumentals from the likes of The London Pops, Percy Faith and Oscar Peterson.
It was a gray and rainy day. This farm seemed to sit so naturally in the landscape.
I heard so many pieces that we’ve played at our own holiday concerts, and I could imagine, and remember what it felt like to play again. The music did what music is intended to do, lifted my spirts and I arrived home after a couple of hours of Christmas music and barns smiling.
My favorite capture. A photogenic green barn!
I hope you are all smiling too, no matter what your holidays will look like. Here’s to spending time together, in person if it’s safe, virtually if it’s not. And here’s to looking forward to 2021. May it bring us all more smiles than frowns.
Classic
Not having a mother still on this earth I hadn’t been paying attention to the upcoming celebration preparations. But today’s newscast reminds me that Sunday is Mother’s Day and that most people won’t be able to celebrate it in traditional ways.
Of course not.
This year most adults in this country will be separated from their moms by more than distance or time, the usual excuses not getting home to visit. Even some younger children, those who didn’t happen to be living with their mothers when all this started, likely won’t be celebrating with her this Sunday. They’ll be separated by the virus. By fear. By common sense.
But I bet there are plenty of creative ways to connect with her. Technology sure helps. At worst people can make coupons to send, dinner at a future date, for example, promises for time spent together when it’s safe again.
Flowers dropped off on the front porch would work too.
None of that will help my family have physical contact with our mom, as she went on ahead sixteen years ago. She’d be 91 now, and I have often wondered, during this pandemic, what she’d think about it all. I know we would have been scared for both of my folks, if they were still alive. I can feel the fear friends with elderly parents have, and I feel some guilty relief that I don’t have that worry.
And as I make weeks worth of meal plans and shop with my lengthy list these days, trying to limit my trips to the store, I remember my mother doing the same thing, for different reasons. It must have been hard feeding a family of six day after day. The endless scrimping and planning. Not wasting anything because there was never enough.
I know I have it much easier, though I sometimes feel the same way these days.
I don’t think we appreciated her for all the things she did for us, all the things she was for us, all those years ago. I wish she had lived longer because I think we were just beginning to realize what we owed her when she died.
Anyway…if you’re a techie and can figure out a way to get Zoom or some other app to connect to heaven…let me know.
I’d like to check in, express my appreciation, even if I can’t be with her, right now, to share a meal.
Merry Christmas – from Katie-Claus.
Katie here. I know some of you are at work today, others are shoveling out from the latest snowstorm. And a few of you are planning fun things to do with your Valentine later on tonight.
I figured you all could use a Valentine Smile so this week I’m doing mama’s Smile post.
My gift to all of you – a picture of me!
Happy Valentines Day everybody! I’m pretty sure you’re all smiling now!
And to my honey, Mr Reilly, down in Florida, I’m sending you special sheltie kisses sweetie!
Me, Reilly and his brother Denny.
Seasons come and seasons go.
Spring
Summer
Fall
Winter
So long 2018, you showed me lots of pretty things but I’m looking forward to finding even more amazing and beautiful images in 2019.
And Happy New Year to all of you, dear readers, Katie and I appreciate your visits to our blog more than you know. We wish for all of you a wonderful 2019!
During the holidays I’ve lost track of Trent’s Weekly Smile challenge, but surely there are things to make me smile this week. After all Christmas was just this past Tuesday.
Come along with me, there’s got to be something to smile about down here!
Still, I was feeling kind of blue, typical for me around this time of year, with the anniversary of my dad’s death on the 23rd. And this year I had the loss of two people I’d call friends, one in his 80s who was a big supporter of our community band, another a friend from almost forty years ago, someone I haven’t seen in many years but still count as a friend. Both died this week of cancer before Christmas had a chance to arrive.
So early this morning I headed out to my favorite park with my new camera, intent on figuring some camera stuff out while searching for a smile. This park never lets me down.
Even though it’s winter there are still colors here.
My goal was to figure out the manual settings on the new camera, how to set the aperture, the iso, the shutter speed. I’d read the manual and I’d searched youtube. Still, though it made sense while I was sitting on the sofa, I hadn’t been successful on the fly once in the woods.
New ice.
Maybe without Katie to distract me I could figure it out today.
I hadn’t intended to grab images of the birds eating out of my hand this time. You’ve seen those before.
Sure, I’ll pose next to these berries for you lady. That will be one seed please.
But I did have a pocket full of seed, hoping to lure them to me so that I could get good photos of them in their ‘natural’ habitat.
Got anything for breakfast lady?
But darn they were cute on my hand too. They were so hungry! I think I was the first human out there and as soon as I started down a trail they’d be swarming overhead.
Wait your turn!
So I set the camera back to auto and tried to get those iconic ‘eating out of my hand’ shots.
Back off titmouse!
One thing I noticed is that it was harder to get a clear focus. I think I’ll need to work on that. And I haven’t figured out how to fire off a bunch of shots at once yet. So I missed a lot of stuff. But I still had a blast.
Does this seed make me look fat?
I didn’t spend too much time feeding the birds at the beginning of the trail, I dropped some seed and moved along, and around the next corner was the flock of turkeys.
Nom nom nom nom.
I tossed them a bit of seed and kept on walking. The birds were following me and making a fuss so I stopped and took a video with my phone just to show people how crazy it was. And while I was doing that a male cardinal showed up.
Surprise!
This has never ever happened. I’ve had a cardinal here and there that was interested in the fact I was feeding the birds, but they’ve always been too shy to hop up on the hand themselves. They generally waited till I tossed some seed on the ground and moved away.
Good seed lady!
This guy startled me, I’d been focusing on the little birds and suddenly my hand was full of a big red bird!
He sat there and ate until he finished all the seed. I talked to him, stopped the video and clicked through some stills, he tipped his head and looked me in the eye, then casually selected another seed.
Yep, I’m pretty from all angles.
He was obviously king of the birds, because all the little birds waited on the ground or flew around my head while he was eating. One chickadee was braver than the rest and did a fly-by and grabbed a seed without stopping. Everyone else waited respectfully.
Meandering makes me smile too.
Finally he finished the seed, nodded at me and flew off across the swamp. I couldn’t stop grinning.
And that’s my smile for the week. A cardinal sat on my hand for a long time. Maybe he was sent from Aunt Vi, or my friends who have recently moved on. Maybe he was just a hungry bird. I don’t know and it doesn’t matter.
These guys are still hanging around. They make me smile too.
I couldn’t ask for a better smile, it’s one I’ll remember forever.
And when I got home this little bit of nature was napping on our deck.
I hope the images here made you smile too.
Magical.
Katie and her family wish you and yours a very happy Christmas!
I have what little shopping I needed to do done. It’s even wrapped and shipped.
I am not doing Christmas dinner this year, so I don’t have to make those last minute frantic trips back to the grocery store for things I’ve forgotten. If I’ve forgotten it this year we just won’t eat it.
Katie is not demanding anything specific for the holiday, unless you count her perpetual demands of park visits. But that’s not really holiday related.
Looking for holiday cheer I decided to do my daily walk up at the mall these last two mornings. What better place to people watch and listen to Christmas music all at the same time?
Especially when I didn’t have anything specific I just had to buy.
So I wandered around and snapped pictures of things I thought were pretty or fun or interesting.
And by the time I left I felt better about the whole holiday thing, and grateful that I don’t have anything left to accomplish except a holiday nap.
We wish all of you an equally peaceful, happy and contented holiday!
