Let There Be Light...

All these dark, drippy days have kept me out of the Christmas spirit. Daughter-in-law and good friend Jessica advised me that she had cheered up considerably when she forced herself to decorate for Christmas. The Christmas tree lights and her Christmas village made her feel better. So last weekend I took her advice and strung lights all over the jungle room (entry greenhouse), tree outside the front door, and set up my little Christmas village. And it does seem cheerier with colorful lights brightening the gloom.

I never can figure out, though, if I should take photos with the flash on so you can see the plants...

Or off so you can see the lights... strung helter skelter...

 Either way, the village does not show up too well in photographs with all those jungle room lights outside the window...

This bride and groom are taking a chilly, snowy, dark-time-of-year ride

You can almost see the ice skater on this little pond, with two young children watching her go round and round on her prescribed figure eight...

Santa's Workshop is appropriately dark for this darkest time of the year at the north pole...

Outdoors the tree in front of the house is getting bigger and bigger... and harder and harder to get lights all the way to the top. But between my trusty ladder and my throwing arm, I succeeded.

The house is ablaze with the lighted jungle room entry beyond the tree...

 I still had a blanket of lights left after all that so I threw it over one of the pines in the rose bed... or part of the pine...

In the morning, when I come in from feeding the horses in the dark hours, it is cheerful to see the house lit up with Christmas lights. The lights on the lower left are a blanket of white lights I didn't know what to do with... so I tossed them over some big ferns by our little goldfish pond. You can never have too many lights...

 Once in awhile, the rain stops. When it does, our Willow Kitty (the feral kitten who adopted us a year ago) sits under a feeder and stares at the birds who come to eat. She wears a belled collar to alert the birds but since she makes no attempt to hide, the bells are redundant. However, before the bells, she did catch an unwary Pine Siskin, probably feeding on the ground. The birds realize, though, that she cannot reach them in this feeder. It is ugly but holds a lot of sunflower seeds and I was tired of refilling the other, smaller ones every day.

Pine Siskin ignoring the cat below

Who me? I'm just enjoying the scenery.

the bird scenery...

Shortly after I took these photos, Willow Kitty leaped upward and grabbed the fence post momentarily. The Siskin flew off... momentarily. Soon the rain started and Kitty left for drier places. Birds swarmed into and under the feeder with the cat away.

Whenever Johnny hears Willow's bells ringing, he says: "You're ringing your dinner bells, aren't you, Willow?" Hopefully, not. Although she did catch a mouse since she has been belled. Mouse dinners are acceptable for cats. But not birds.

Now the daylight hours are destined to lengthen... slowly and imperceptibly for awhile... but lengthen they will. I will keep my Christmas lights lit until the sun reappears for more than five minutes at a time.

Let there be light...