Where oh where did the dogs go? They even left their bones behind ...

About the only thing around here that’s in the Christmas Spirit is the weather. We’ve had some type of snow nearly every day since the weekend. An inch here, a flurry there, and showers scattered around. It’s really nice. But otherwise I couldn’t be less in the spirit of things this year. Usually I love Christmas, but this year it just doesn’t seem like it at all. I still think they should insert another month in-between Thanksgiving and Christmas to give us all time to adjust to the whole idea. I never think about Christmas until Thanksgiving is over with, and then it’s only three weeks away. I need more time!

When I was a child Christmas was a magical time. We would go shopping in downtown Poughkeepsie where all the store fronts were decorated gaily. We bought our Christmas tree. Mom would bake cookies and my sister and I would decorate them with different colored frostings. My Dad would roll out the fake plug-in fireplace and put it in the den where the tree stood in all its tinselly glory. We made trips at night in the car to drive by looking at Christmas lighting displays. Everything we did contributed to the whole feel of the season.

Then the big morning finally arrived and we were greeted with a tree piled high with presents. I think our parents totally spoiled us!

Hah, look at me in my baggy britches PJs! Who am I going to whack with that candy cane??

Here we are getting our Patty PlayPal dolls. She’s as big as I am!

I wish I could recapture some of that childhood magic. Maybe I don’t try hard enough. I should get out shopping, bake cookies, sing carols to the dogs, etc. This year there is still the pall of sadness over my Mom’s death hanging around. I still haven’t started to decorate the house. Our tree (which we got last weekend) is still standing in a bucket of water in the garage. We haven’t gotten around to putting lights up outside yet. This weekend, I keep telling myself, we must do all of that. To put it all up only to take it all back down and pack it up again in two weeks seems ridiculous somehow. Yet I know it will help us to “get in the spirit.”

To me it’s not about the presents but the whole feeling surrounding this time of year. Maybe I’m just a big kid that never grew up and I expect too much. It’s not something you can force. Either you feel it or you don’t.

The week before Christmas we have tickets to see the Rockettes in the Christmas Spectacular at Radio City Music Hall in NYC. I’m excited about that! We’ll roam around Rockefeller Center and see the big tree lit up, folks ice skating in the chilly air, and it will seem like something out of a Christmas movie. When I was a child my parents took me in on the train to see the Rockettes for my birthday a couple of times, but that was back in the days that they had a movie instead of stage show. I remember we saw “Father Goose” one year. Maybe by then I’ll be feeling more Christmas-y.

I love having different birds at my feeder. I have a feeding station out front where I basically just spread seed on the ground and in a bird bath, plus two hanging feeders on the deck. Yesterday to my great regret as I looked out at the front one I saw the large stray cat (not my kitten; a grown cat) rush towards the birds and it caught one. NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!! I rushed outside and shooed it away. Alas, it still had the bird in its mouth. Listen guys, this is supposed to be a bird feeding station, not a bird eating station. Sigh. Poor birdy. I felt so badly. I felt as if I had contributed to its demise.

Here are my “back yard” birds.

We have a pair of Downy Woodpeckers that come to the suet I have out. Here is Mrs. Downy.

And Mr. Downy seen through a blur of snowflakes.

The goldfinches are wearing their somewhat drab winter coats.

We have tons of Tufted Titmice around. I love their little top knots. They are sweet birds. Looking very penguin-ish is a nuthatch in the background.

Here’s the White-Breasted Nuthatch. He looks like he’s wearing a toupee to me.

And the Junco looking very cold this morning.

I’ve been wandering around in the woods again. Every time I walk there I see something I didn’t see before. The following photos were taken over a month ago when the trees were changing and we’d had some rainy weather. The rain always brings out the polypores (I just call them shelf mushrooms and have done with it!) that grow on trees. They come in all different shapes and sizes. Take a look.

This tree has an assortment of different kinds.

Taking a closer look, the two in the following photo look like little round cakes or tortes, complete with icing around the edges.

There is of course the albino variety.

This one has its own SBM patch. (small brown mushroom)

This type of polypore always grows on dead birch trees with no exception. I think they like their host family!

To me this one looks like an alligator’s head! 

This tree is trying to grow a beard.

Then there are the other kinds of strange growths.

This one on closer inspection looks like it just burst through the bark in one big eruption.

This one encircled the entire trunk of this tree like a knobby girdle. Looks a bit like a tadpole or some kind of embryo from this angle.

I like these strange appendages to trees and find them interesting. If you don’t find them interesting just wait a bit. They tend to grow on you as time goes by.