Yet another fire is burning in our fireplace.

The backyard continues to be cleaned up of any of this year’s fallen wood debris, as I continue to burn everything & anything I can fit into the fireplace…

 

Like I’ve said before…………

It doesn’t have to be pretty/pristine or perfectly chain-sawed pieces of wood………..

 

It just needs to be something I can drag/heave/break/stomp/or hoist into the fireplace to burn…

 

 

Burn—baby—burn…

 

 

 

 

The Christmas Tree is up in the den…………..it’s beautiful…

This year it’s a Sand Pine.

Past years it’s been a Cedar (really painful to trim)………..(even more painful to un-trim when it’s dry).

The Sand Pine’s needles are gentler and kinder.

Because there are so many house cats here (Zelda, Gatsby, Pyewacket, Archimedes, DaVinci, Copernicus, Prosecco and Sam)-(and a few of them are young and capricious)………………….I’ve opted for lights and lots of crystal glass garlands (that are well-attached to the tree) rather than the multi-generationally old ornaments.

Oh, and candy canes, lots and lots of candy canes………………..in gradually declining quantities…………….with the help of my younger daughter (who is feeding them to her horse, Poppy).

Poppy continually has minty fresh breath these days…..along with pinkish-red lips.

 

Why do they make the wrappers on candy canes so hard to get off…………….you always inadvertently end up eating or flossing with some of the plastic wrapper, no matter how hard you try peeling it off…

Tomorrow we start baking……………cut-out cookies and gingerbread men are first on the list.

We still have a residual smokey-taint to anything coming out of the oven since Thanksgiving…………………….but we won’t go into that just now…………………….the memory is still too fresh and painful…

We already have Prancer pulled out of the hayloft and propped up in the front yard…………….I had to use the block & tackle to lower him/her down carefully.

I also had to get a couple new strings of fairy lights (to replace the old ones).

 

This was because the rats &/or squirrels had gnawed through all the wires of the old ones.

 

 

 

……….I also had to “secure” Prancer over a metal fence post to ensure he wouldn’t fall over (or get pushed over by the Clydesdales…)

(It kind of looks like he’s been staked through his body——-not super jolly and Christmasy——-but securely in place even with the Clydesdales occasionally rubbing on him.)

Prancer is solitarily, glaringly white out in our front yard right now…………….I should have read the packaging more carefully…………….I bought halogen fairy lights…………they are searing & painful to look at for too long…