Who turned the lights on?

Sunday morning Brian and I went to our Christian trail-riding club's Christmas party. Fortunately, a couple other "not old" folks were there, so he enjoyed himself. We had good food, a fun cut-throat gift exchange, and afterwards, those who desired were treated to a buggy ride. I came home with two beautiful battery-operated candles that I promptly installed in the small windows on either side of our fireplace. They can be turned on to just flicker, or flicker and play Christmas carols. 😊

As we were driving back from the party straight to Brian's Sunday job, he asked about a Christmas tree. I told him I figured we were skipping one this year, given the lack of interest 'til that moment, the late date, high prices, and dry fall. Then he had a great idea! My MIL is going to her daughter's in Colorado for Christmas (where Rick returned from that night) so is probably not putting up her little artificial tree; Brian suggested we ask her if we could borrow it. The answer was affirmative, so we picked it up on our way home. When Rick and I arrived home from the airport after midnight, this cheery sight greeted us:

It was a little too tucked away for my taste, though, so this morning I found a suitable box to give it more height and presence, and draped a festive flannel sheet about the box and base. Rick had brought back some wool roving and washed mohair locks from his niece for me, so I tucked those gifts under it. Now that I have a place to put gifts, it's time to do some wrapping! I guess we should add some ornaments, although I'm enjoying the simplicity of the little green tree and white lights.

Yesterday morning the sky looked promising for a pretty sunrise, but it fizzled and the fog started moving in. Then the sun came up on the other side of the firs and took my breath away. I grabbed my iPhone and captured these, SOOC (straight-out-of-camera):

The fog and clouds took over again for awhile, but the sun shown gloriously all afternoon. (I don't realize I miss sunshine until an extended period without.) Then this morning, we were gifted a colorful sunrise above the frost:

With gifts like that, whatever we put under the little tree are mere tokens – but tokens of love are treasured. 😊

Speaking of tokens of love, this beautiful bell arrived in yesterday's mail from a dear blogpal:

Not only is it beautiful, it has such a sweet tone – and is Fair Trade. Right now it's hanging from the light fixture in our entry so I can bump it often and smile, but I'll probably move it to the shelter of our front porch so the wind can play with it, along with the chimes I was delighted to end up with from the dressage club Christmas party I went to the week before. Beauty and music; those of some of the nicest gifts!

It's beginning to look a lot more like Christmas at . . .

Creature feature with a side of sky

I've been collecting deer photos for awhile now. The first two were taken in early October (I think when our washing machine was out of order and I was carrying laundry down to the neighbor's), but they never fit into my narrative. As the pictures 'aged,' I almost deleted them several times. Do you do that? Take photos, and then toss them unused like food items with expired "Use by" dates? Well, I'm glad I didn't this time, sitting here typing with that pretty doe staring at me from my screen.

If the deer are going to eat our grass, the ewes might as well benefit from it, too. (The tracks are from hauling manure; the guys didn't get much done before the old spreader crashed.)

Bardot proves the old adage about the grass on the other side of the fence:

As you can see, it has been gray here. Lots of clouds and/or fog, with and without rain. Not many colorful sunrises (above is this morning's shades of gray), but there were two rainbows in the sky on my way to work Thursday morning. The main one started out as just a colorful smudge on the horizon in front of me as I drove, and kept growing and glowing bigger and brighter until it was a perfect arch – just the blessing I needed on a tough morning.

Another blessing given the weather was getting to see the last full moon of 2019. I tried to take photos of it sailing through the tree branches and clouds, but such shots are not in my iPhone's wheelhouse. Still, these shots have an atmospheric quality I like:

Tonight I captured proof of the strange and enduring love affair Chuckie has with my slippers. He's usually Johnnie-on-the-spot when I go out at night to do chores, and is often waiting and watching in the morning as well. When I swap slippers for chore boots, Chuckie is all over them, shoving his face inside, rubbing on them . . . you'd think they were made of catnip!

That's it for now from . . .

Of hay and holidays, help and hope

Getting the words flowing into blog post form is sometimes like moving a 100#, three-string hay bale – heavy lifting! In responding to a blogpal's email this morning, I realized I was sharing much of what I wanted in a post, so I'm going to riff on that. Adding photos, of course!

Good morning (afternoon now)! It's foggy here, and now drizzling. I missed my opportunity to ride Lance before the rain started because a friend called and we talked a loooong time, but connecting with friends is important. He and Ollie got to run and play in the arena last night for quite awhile, so at least he got some exercise then – and probably would have had even less than usual to give me today.

Still no tree or indoor decorations here, but last Friday after school, Brian put up Christmas lights outside. By the time Rick got home with his mom in tow for Brian’s birthday supper, the house looked very festive. Other than missing a spot to put presents (not that we go overboard with those), I am not missing having a Christmas tree. I did get to go to an annual Christmas party I enjoy last Sunday. It meant leaving Brian home alone which I do with trepidation, but it seemed to work out okay. (Or at least what I don’t know won’t kill me….) And several of my horse acquaintances who were there have come out on the other side of teenage boys and lived to tell about it, which is always encouraging to hear.

Birthday boy in the jacket my sister sent him

It was a busy weekend, starting with prepping for that Friday birthday supper. My MIL spent Friday night here so she could ride with us to a church where Brian's bell choir was performing the next day. Saturday evening we went to a talent show (where the bell choir performed again) and senior class fundraising dinner at the school; we went early to help, then Rick left early to clean out the clogged-up woodstove and pack while I stayed for the full program and all the clean-up afterwards. At o'dark thirty Sunday morning I drove Rick to the Portland airport, getting back before sunrise (and son-rise), took a short nap, got the son to RISE so I could take him to work, came back home (the scenes below caught my eye on the way home),

picked him up from work, came back home, then took him to Salem for the third bell choir performance of the weekend. 😳

This final performance was a prequel for the Salem Pops Orchestra concert which many of the high school students were attending followed by dinner out (a "vegetarian" version of public school prom), so most of the bell choir members were dressed in their fancy formal attire. (No, Brian didn't go. His 'girlfriend,' who doesn't go to his school and we've never met, couldn't get off work for it.)

Something I haven't mentioned before is that I'm tentatively horse-shopping. Lance is so compromised that when it comes to a riding horse he is no longer my "mental health mustang;" instead he is my "heartbreak kid" – and could end up being my neck-breaker. At first it was all online window-shopping, without seeing anything in my price range of real interest. Then I looked up a Morgan sales flyer I got last spring and contacted one of the breeders who had advertised in it, resulting in a road trip with a friend to see his horses. None suited me, but he told me about one he had at a place closer to me that I've since looked at as well. This last horse does interest me, but I have two big obstacles – hay and husband. We didn't have enough hay just for the horses and sheep that we have, not to mention what we’d need if we added a third horse, and hay has been really hard to find around here. And my husband has been predictably poo-poo on the idea, although there are mixed signals. (I have enough funds set aside for the purchase, but I do need to have Rick to do the pre-purchase exam and I want his consent. Many moons ago he bought a horse without consulting me 😡 and I am determined not to do the same to him.)

That is a rather long explanation of what transpired yesterday. The Morgan's helpful owner had texted me the name and number of someone with hay for sale (and offered to haul it for me 😮 which of course I couldn't accept without a commitment to buy his horse), and yesterday afternoon was the only window of dry weather and available time (the seller's, Brian's, and mine) to get a load. So I left work early enough to wrestle the sideboards off our flatbed trailer, pick up Brian from school and drive nine more miles SE to the hay seller's.

A treat for the eyes before the unloading began last night

Folks, I've been spoiled by our favorite local grower. His bales are 60# or less; that's 68 three-string, 100# bales. But beggars can't be choosers, and I was just thankful to have found decent hay relatively close without breaking the bank! Most of it was loaded for us on the farm; when we got home last night it was pure man- and woman-power to get it stacked in our barn, and we were both hurting by the end (and still are). There is NO WAY I could have done this without my strapping son's help! Now I have to wait and see if my husband will relent on the horse....

My latest gift-knitting project is coming along; I think I’ll finish them in time to gift them for Christmas:

Gotta pick up the kid from school so bye for now from . . .

Out of the funk fog

The inner gloom has lifted, thank the good Lord. Yesterday morning I recognized and captured beauty;

this morning I gloried in it:

Nothing else has changed, really. I shipped off two Christmas packages yesterday, but still have no desire to 'deck the halls' of home. Maybe after getting through the teen's fraught 18th birthday this week (he thinks everything should change in his favor at that magic age) I will start getting in the spirit, but I rather doubt it. My old dog is still failing and my not-old horse is still compromised and my husband is still . . . well, anyway. In spite of it all, my outlook is brighter and a good friend came to visit me today with a little pick-me-up (ha!)

but she was actually the pick-me-up and I was able to give her her birthday present a few days early (I think it's a winner!):

I'm getting ready to cast on (hopefully tonight) another gift knit with this skein of spindle-spun beauty:

It feels good to be spinning up some of my fiber stash, and finding good homes for some of my handknits. It's nowhere close to the Swedish Death Cleaning that Julie Zickefoose is doing, but there's no time like the present to start downsizing and minimizing, even in small ways.

And now an episode from the Chuckie Channel. I was trying (unsuccessfully) to get some good pictures of my hens today when I heard something and they all started looking up. Chuckie had gotten up on the roof of their run to survey his kingdom:

He thought I should love on him, but didn't seem to realize I couldn't get close enough to accommodate his desires:

Time to start knitting at . . .