Nine more days.....

Just nine more days till Christmas. Goes by so fast, every year. When Labor Day rolls around, the holidays are here in a heart-beat. (And I say that every year.)

I spoke to my cousin L last night..... she just started her Christmas shopping last week, so of course she's frazzled. Too much stress, with the cold weather and rain and snow they're having in the northeast, plus the crowded stores...... she says she's "getting too old for this" and she has absolutely no Christmas spirit this year. L told me the same thing last year, and the year before that.

My suggestion to her (for the past three years) was to put out some Christmas decorations before Thanksgiving..... and do her holiday gift-shopping in October and early November when the weather is nicer and the stores aren't crowded with pre-Thanksgiving shoppers. If she did that, by the time she sat down to eat her Thanksgiving turkey, all of her Christmas shopping would be history and she could just enjoy the holiday for a change. She told me she would do that next year. She won't. (She told me the same thing last year and the year before that.) I think she wouldn't know what to do if she wasn't stressed-out.


We have been having warm and sunny days (yesterday and the day before) interrupted by cool and cloudy days (today). It was so drippy and cloudy this morning that I didn't let the chickens out of the little yard by their coop. They weren't too happy about that, but at least they're protected from the hawks, who seem to do most of their hunting on days like this.

Little PittyPat, my pint-sized Dutch Bantam hen, has begun to lay eggs. Cute little eggs, half the size of the other hens' eggs, and the shells are a light blue/green in color. PittyPat is very proud of her eggs, and she will stand there in the nesting box looking down at her just-hatched egg for a full minute or two before she hops down and goes on with her day. I would guess that two of PittyPat's eggs would equal one of Scarlett's or Prissy's. Being that I use the oldest eggs first, I haven't cracked open one of PittyPat's eggs yet.


A few of the neighbors have begun to come by with little gifts for the holiday..... a poinsettia plant, a box of cookies. My husband has made some cookie-sized Christmas cakes from his plum pudding recipe and he will be giving those to the neighbors. We never did plan a Christmas party..... I just couldn't convince my husband (or myself, either) that a party here would be a good thing to do. I even thought about throwing together an impromptu pot-luck dinner party, but I don't like to do last-minute things, and we don't like to get last-minute invitations either. So that idea went out of my head as soon as I thought of it.

Maybe for Valentine's Day...... surely everyone would like to "wear something red and bring something sweet" in mid-February. That always worked for our friends in Clear Lake. Maybe it would work here? Gracious.... if we don't try it, we'll just never know.


As I type, the sun is coming out and the sky is turning from pale gray to a pretty blue. The chickens may be coming out of the coop after all. From my sitting room, I can hear Scarlett clucking and calling.... she is most unhappy when she can't run around the yard.