December 25 2006

From years past, these Christmas Seals were on the letter my father sent my mother while he was still in the Army, Stateside, in 1943, waiting for orders to be sent to the European Theater. Maybe it's the long long nights that make me reflect back (to the time before my birth), maybe it's my father's upcoming 93rd birthday on the 27th, or maybe it's just that this is part of my nature. In any case, as this year comes to a close, I've been thinking more and more of times long ago, and what the world was like then. Here in the present, as I look out the window to the snowless landscape, I am amazed that some of the grass could actually use mowing, and that the daffodils continue their misguided progress out of the ground. Apparently the global warming process has fooled them too. This is the first year since our move to New York State that December has not found us surrounded by several feet of snow; though with January just around the corner, that could happen any time for the next three months. I still put out seed in our bird feeder, and get the usual crowd of feathered friends (juncos, sparrow, jays, titmice, nuthatches, cardinals, doves, a very occasional goldfinch, lots of other finches, a lone rufuous sided towhee, chickadees black-capped and otherwise, and a very misguided downy woodpecker that hangs upside down on the perch pulling out sunflower seeds, apparently never having heard that woodpeckers don't eat out of bird feeders). The larger, pileated woodpeckers are doing their jack-hammer imitations in the surrounding forests, and now that the leaves are down I have a good view of what are either crows' or hawks' nests in the bigger oaks. The deer have been invisible for a few days, though I see their hoof prints all over the lower planted terraces. In fact, they and I continue to fight over who controls the last planting of irises this past fall; they keep coming back to the same one and digging it up. Must be frustrating for whatever their plans are for me to keep replanting it. And they (the deer) have also grudgingly gnawed at the ends of the yucca leaf spears. I know they don't like the stuff, and won't eat it, but I guess they just have to convince themselves again and again. I would much prefer they stay in the long weedy areas we thoughtfully left for them to chew on - or even come out to the flats and mow the grass. But alas, they are pretty but perverse, and always seem to know which plants I most want them to avoid, which they take great pains to nibble.