#OptOutside #BuyNothingDay IT'S TODAY!

We hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and, if not, that you enjoy a speedy recovery. Today is the day to Opt Outside while we Buy Nothing, but first give any nearby family members and significant others a hug. We're going to follow the hash tags in today's title. You might want to VISIT FOR FREE a Minnesota State Park. Beat that, Black Friday merchants. Tomorrow we'll support Small Business Saturday at a book store or two.

It's late November and supposed to be a little warmer. There's a couple of oak tree branches that need to be pruned so they won't shade part of the indigenous plants garden that's going in next Spring. We'll promptly use pruning sealer anyhow, but November is supposed to be a time that's safe from oak wilt.

three amaryllis, posing as Wise Men

Photo by J. Harrington

Each of the three amaryllis bulbs on the window sill is sprouting nicely. (Each is, all are!) We're thinking they might represent the Three Wise Men if all goes well and none get lost to amaryllis wilt or something.

Taylors Falls Christmas Lighting

Photo by J. Harrington

Tonight is the Christmas Lighting Festival at Taylors Falls. We suspect (and hope) that's all it will take to get us really into the Christmas mood. Having Thanksgiving dinner with some suspected of supporting Trump had us on our best behavior, and that get's really stressful after the first five minutes or so. Today we're back to our hopeful and golden-hearted curmudgeonly selves. We wish you all the same.

                     A Christmas Song

By Norman Williams

Christmas is coming. The goose is getting fat

                        Please put a penny in the old man’s hat.

                        If you haven’t got a penny, a ha’penny will do.

                        If you haven’t got a ha’penny, Gold bless you.

Tonight the wide, wet flakes of snow

Drift down like Christmas suicides,

Layering the eaves and boughs until

The landscape seems transformed, as from

A night of talk or love. I’ve come

From cankered ports and railroad hubs

To winter in a northern state:

Three months of wind and little light.

Wood split, flue cleaned, and ashes hauled,

I am now proof against the cold

And make a place before the stove.

Mired fast in middle age, possessed

Of staved-in barn and brambled lot,

I think of that fierce-minded woman

Whom I loved, painting in a small,

Unheated room, or of a friend,

Sharp-ribbed from poverty, who framed

And fitted out his house by hand

And writes each night by kerosene.

I think, that is, of others who

Withdrew from commerce and the world

To work for joy instead of gain.

O would that I could gather them

This Yuletide, and shower them with coins.

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