Sunday Mornin' Coming Down

Woke up today to a bunch of new snow. It's the kind of snow that Blue and I would have reveled in if we were out on the farm. There is an ice crust on it that is 1 to 2 inches thick. I found out because I went out to change the hummingbird water and sweep off an area to spread bird seed. A line of juncos was waiting for me and I couldn't figure out why they weren't digging in the snow for food. Then I realized the ice crust was so thick there's no way they were heavy enough to dig through it.

If we were on the farm, Blue and I would bundle up and go off hiking in the woods. This snow is the best for walking with sure footing, even if it does crunch as you walk. We would be able to see every movement in the woods and track animals that are heavy enough to make prints. Even little animals would be making swish marks on top of the ice.

As nice as that would be, the reality is that we would have been "snowed in" for a week now and probably out of food and clean laundry and human contact. In other words, by now we'd be a little crazier than usual! Yes! God is good. My cozy little house is the best place for us right now!

I was able to get out for a bit on Friday. Drove over to Goodwill for a little shopping therapy. I love that Goodwill. It's a big one and always pretty clean and bright. I think this is where they send all the estates, because you can find priceless collections there. The kind someone saves their whole life, then whoever is settling their estate just takes them all to Goodwill. You'll go one day and there will be 100 glass swans, or a zillion salt and pepper shakers. Sometimes it will be sad because some one's hand carved boats or boats will be there. They're never all together. Somehow they get spread all over the store on different shelves. Maybe that's my excuse for having to go up and down every aisle when I go over there.

Anyway, I found a great fake tree there. It was in a box that looked like it had never been opened. (Sometimes Target sends boxes of big things that haven't sold - I thought it might be one of those.) I wasn't able to see what the tree looked like so I just crossed my fingers and hoped it would do. As it turned out, it was a used tree that someone had very tidily packed away in the box. SIE spent the night Friday so we put it together and decorated it on Saturday morning. SIE also shared his cold with me, so today my throat is sore and my nose runny. I still need lights, but we found a pack of gold tinsel in my wrapping paper stash and covered the tree with gold. So far I've only had to clean up one cat throw up containing tinsel and hope Waylon learned his lesson. Waylon is disturbed that I'm not watering the tree. I guess Christmas tree water is a Seasonal delicacy for animals!

The Jesse tree will have to wait for another year. I tried to google "Jesse Tree Ornaments" and got a porno site. Yuck!

For those who have asked, I think the Jesse Tree ornaments are flexible. They are symbols and you can use the traditional symbols or create your own. Some people put up a symbol on each day of Advent and use a sampling of bible stories to make up the ornament. Some just do it the last week of Advent and use the O Antiphons - these are short songs from the bible which give names to the Lord. The "O Come, O Come, Emanuel" song is based on those O Antiphons. There's the easy ones like "Star of David" - the six pointed star, and the "Root of Jesse" - which is usually a tree stump with a new branch growing out of it, or "Lion of Judah" - guess what - a lion. I'll slow down one day and make a list and then make the ones I like. STraditionally, some people replace the Jesse Tree with an evergreen tree on Christmas Eve. That's because the Christmas Tree is a symbol of Christ - being ever green, ever alive, ever present. There's lots of interpretations for all this, so it's fine to be flexible.

I think today is the Winter Solstice. I know there wasn't much daylight yesterday. It was dark until 8 AM, then dark again by 4:15 PM. Today seems brighter. One problem with being snowed in is that the only thing on TV is continual weather reports on every channel. So we don't know what's happening outside of the Portland area highway loop. Global warming or the shift of poles might have occured and we wouldn't know it. It may be they cancelled the Winter Solstice this year!