Christmas 2021

Our first order of business for this holiday season was choosing the perfect Christmas tree. It just so happens that we had one growing in the front yard. A few years ago, we had transplanted a balsam fir from the backyard into the front of the house. Unfortunately, it shared the same root ball with what we think is an apple tree. We weren’t sure if these two would be competing to survive in the future, so we decided that the balsam fir would have to go at some point. We thought the area would look nicer with a fruit tree instead. We feel we wouldn’t miss the balsam fir, being that we have planted several Norway spruce, blue spruce, and a variety of pines around the property. There would be plenty of those types of trees filling up the yard and they would grow and get bigger in the coming years. Instead of simply discarding the tree into the woods, I suggested this would make for the perfect Christmas tree for the holiday season. On November 28th, the tree came down outside and was put up inside the house and decorated.

Here it is! Our Christmas tree for this year. Not the best of trees compared to what we have had in the past but with a few lights and ornaments, I think it looks pretty festive.

We had a nice and quiet Christmas with a lot of baking and cooking and of course, making time to offer my black-capped chickadees Christmas day treats. We even had some very pretty snow falling, adding to our already white Christmas.

This reminds me, among the presents under the tree brought to me from Santa, was this fascinating bird book that I’m pretty excited to read. I would recommend this to my fellow bird lovers. It is chock full of bird facts and beautiful illustrations.

David Allen Sibley’s What It’s Like to Be a Bird

Every Friday night, one of our new traditions entails going down to Farmington and walking around town while drinking coffee. Being that Christmas Eve fell on Friday this year, we settled on going down to town two nights after. I decided to take a few photographs of a few of my favorite lit-up homes and a few of the beautifully decorated storefronts.

The Octogan House

You may be wondering, what is going on with these giant earmuffs in this photograph? These are from Chester Greenwood Day, also known as Earmuff Day, which falls on the first Saturday of December. Every year, the town of Farmington celebrates one of its famous residents. Greenwood first designed the earmuff when he was fifteen. He came up with the idea while ice skating so his ears wouldn’t catch frostbite. With a little help from his grandmother, the first earmuffs were born. The rest is history!

We also stopped into Reny’s to see if they had any after-Christmas sales. We hit the jackpot and left with a variety of chocolates. A few of them were fifty percent off and I think we did pretty good for ourselves. Our advent calendar will be filled with a variety of goodies for next year.