(Late) Holiday Miscellany.

Pictured here we have Lexie’s Christmas cactus which bloomed beautifully and prolifically right on time, and has the honor of being one of our longest-lived houseplants.

Lacking a real live Christmas tree since neither of us were actually going to be here for the actual day, we festooned our then-dormant wood stove with lights and used it as “the Christmas stove.” It’s pretty steadily burning wood these days, and has been relieved of its tree duties.

Lastly, Sküti von Buns, the Christmas bunny. She’s gotten pretty big, but the only reason she let me get this close with the camera is because I was down on the floor where she could keep an eye on me, where it didn’t seem like I could do any serious looming and threatening.

Good golly Ma, it’s a fire!?

For anybody who’s been following the continuing saga of our not being able to get the wood stove installed for one reason or another... it’s finally over! After one missing part, then another, all finally came together. Our guy came over and put it in last week on Friday, the only sunny and over 40 day we looked to be having for a while.

There’s a whole subculture to fire-building. Everyone has their own tips, preferences, etc. I was walking down the street past a neighbor’s house the other day after only a few days of keeping the home fires burning, and thought, “Man, that fence sure would make some nice kindling!” You start to look at everything wooden in terms of how well (or whether) it would burn.

We have a guy bringing a big load of wood soon. Meantime, we’ve borrowed what we have now from Tom & Caroline’s stash. They came by and helped us build the inaugural fire Saturday morning, and Caroline took this picture for us. (and Terri brought some more wood by to us yesterday!).

In the words of the old song:
The weather outside is frightful,
but the fire is so delightful!

Disco Elf Yerself.

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

The Normans.

This is a picture Uncle Bob sent me last Christmas. A much younger group of Normans. I would guess this is from about 1981 or so (??). My good old Papa John had not been gone too long.

It’s been over twenty years since we lost our sweet Aunt Jackie much too early. This year will be our first Christmas without our sweet Dede. Thought she’d make it to 100, but she got pretty close...she’ll be missed.

Further adventures of Sküti von Buns.

Sküti is a rambunctious teenager now, grown to what we suppose is nearly her full size. Though we hoped she would grow to be more affectionate, she probably is as close to that as something so low down on the food chain can ever be. Rabbits don’t seem to desire affection as much as tolerate it. She is pretty hilarious and curious, practicing her evasive maneuvers and running and jumping around. Handy I guess, when foremost in your little animal brain—coddled though you are, and with no actual predator experience to tell you so—horrible screeching death could come from the air at any time.

Thanks!

Photo of Lexie and me from our first official family thanksgiving celebration at our little New Harmony house. (photo courtesy of our friend China, who was one of the guests)

We had a two friends come up from Nashville and another six from here for an even 11 (OK, an odd eleven). A good time was had by all.

We had a lovely free-range turkey from the nice local folks at DuMond Farms, and coincidentally were photographed while purchasing said turkey, by the Posey County News for an article on local turkey purveyors. Wish I had that photo to post...

Family Harmony.

So Miss Anne and Natalie just came for a nice visit. We did pretty much everything a person can do in our little town this time of year. Ate out, went antique shopping, walked around looking at the town. And it snowed! Well, it flurried...and was unseasonably cold, especially for my girls from Alabammy (the picture of the 3 of us was taken by Natalie with her iPhone, and if you look closely we have snowflakes on us).

Nobody really took many pictures. Lexie was with us most of the time, but missed all photo-ops. The other pictures are from Griffin, IN, just up the road. Home of our friends the Mumfords. One of only two towns by that name in the U.S. if my research is correct. The other in Georgia. Since Griffin is my name and Miss Anne’s maiden name, it seemed like a trip to make.

We did a lot of visiting with friends at Laura’s coffee house and elsewhere, which is what we mostly do for amusement here anyway. Everyone was glad to finally meet some of my family.