Uncategorized

The days will be getting a bit longer now.  Spaceship Earth completes another circuit around Sol and in a few day according to our calendars. Likewise, I will mark another year of my personal history between now and then.

The 2023 flight seemed to be a bumpy ride at times.   Many of us will be gathering in the remainder of the year with friends and family among lights and holiday decorations to counteract the cold and gloom.

May the warmth of that fellowship continue to grow into the new year and spread as goodwill to all our fellow passengers on planet Earth.

The holidays are here, some decent rainfall in the past few weeks has resulted in the hillsides turning green again, and Christmas decorations are in place.

For the past two years because the COVID pandemic put a damper on holidays, we set up a smaller tree in the living room instead of our traditional 9 footer in the family room.  A new red rug was added this year in hopes of reducing breakage of ornaments in the event they slipped off the branches.

Having the lights pre-wired on the tree is a great time saver so it only took a few minutes to assemble the tree.

Then time for the ornaments.  I have been collecting glass ornaments for many years.  We have some really nice fabric covered boxes for storing the collection.

At this point I do not use all the ornaments on the tree.  I have decided on bird, flower and geometric ornaments for this tree.  (The Santas, snowmen, clowns, animals, musical instruments, toys and other random items worked out nicely for the smaller tree used the past two years.  )

It took a lot of trips up a ladder to decorate the top part of the tree.  Then the rest is easy.

Ready for Santa.

Happy Holidays, everyone!

No, the colors were not photoshopped.  This is what happens when there is a wildfire near enough to color the sky.

And then late this afternoon, a random thunderstorm came through. At first it looked like snow — only instead of flakes it was round. A bit later it harder and louder as the hail came down. It was cold enough that instead of melting as soon as it stopped bouncing like previous hail we had encountered, this time it laid on the ground until from a distance it looked like a light dusting of snow,

Tree up, most gifts wrapped and on their way, working on the rest of the preparations. Meanwhile, since there has been a little rain in the past few weeks, the hills are starting to change from summer golden brown to holiday green.