There\u2019s such thin ice on the water in the little no-name pond north of us that little dots of open water perforate it.\u00a0 A breeze ruffled the dots as the dog and I walked past the pond this morning, causing the ice to undulate with the water.\u00a0 It was quite wonderful to see, and we paused there for a while, just watching.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then we walked on a boardwalk that overlooks a much larger pond, but our vantage point revealed no frozen undulations. We may have been too far from the pond surface to see them but, most likely, the ice was just thicker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We left the boardwalk and continued through that neighborhood. Birds were the only source of movement around us until a car motored slowly by and stopped, the driver clearly checking an address. Satisfied that he\u2019d found the right place, he carried a to-go cup of a hot beverage and a small paper bag to someone\u2019s door and knocked. He repeated the knock a couple times, then gave up and left his delivery on the threshold. Someone had ordered what looked like a coffee and small pastry, and lacked the energy or inclination to answer the door when it arrived.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The man seemed surprised to see my smile. Then he smiled back, wished us \u201cHappy holidays,\u201d and drove quietly away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Rascal and I entered Oakwoods Nature Area, where we almost never come across another human, and this time was no exception. We did, however, come across a white-tailed squirrel. It seemed to be a white-tailed fox squirrel, rather than a color variant of a gray squirrel, and it was busy doing regular squirrel things. At first, I thought the color might be a trick of the light, but, no, the tail stayed white as the squirrel bustled about. That means that lately, I\u2019ve seen a blond fox squirrel, a black one with a normal-colored tail, and this one, with a normal-colored body and a white tail. And, of course, plain old fox squirrels in their squirrely legions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Back in our own neighborhood, we headed for Sugarbush. On our approach to the park, we saw a dad open the back door of his car and decant a little fellow from a child seat. Parent and child then proceeded slowly, hand in hand, toward the playground, discussing important matters such as what the passing doggy might be thinking about. The child wore fuzzy earmuffs on a headband that sported antlers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Deep in the Sugarbush woods, I saw a gleam, about twelve feet off the ground. It was a Christmas ornament on a slender branch, the first one that slender on that particular tree. This not the first time folks have undertaken the seasonal decoration of the woods, but you have to wonder how they got the ornament so high in the tree. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Twelve feet is quite a distance. A ladder that could get you that high weighs a not inconsiderable amount and is unwieldy. You\u2019d probably want a friend to help you carry it. That way, the friend could hold the ladder for you when you climbed up with the ornament in your pocket. It sounds like a friend escapade to me, one they\u2019ll remember fondly down the years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Another nice bit of decorating caught my eye nearer to home. Someone visiting one of our neighbors had left a car at the curb. It was navy blue. With Christmas lights. They were tastefully done. Nothing over the top. A single string of the large, now-old-fashioned bulbs on either side of the vehicle, and they seemed to be on. What did the driver use a power source, especially given that no one was, at that time, in the car? I had to check it out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I found, on closer inspection, that the lights weren\u2019t really shining. They weren\u2019t even really lights, except insofar as artists\u2019 representations are real. They were magnets. I looked them up when we got home, and found they\u2019re widely available for not too much money. The photographs illustrating their use were nowhere near as pretty as that blue car, though.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This morning\u2019s walk had one more point of interest. It cropped up in front of a business along Plymouth Road, not one of the more likely places for us to spot interesting things, but this was something most anyone would agree was interesting. When I showed my husband later, he suggested I put it between the pages of a book while it was still damp, to get the wrinkles out as it dried, and crisp it up again. That\u2019s what I did with the ten-dollar bill, and there it still is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
22 December 2023<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There\u2019s such thin ice on the water in the little no-name pond north of us that little dots of open water perforate it.\u00a0 A breeze ruffled the dots as the dog and I walked past the pond this morning, causing the ice to undulate with the water.\u00a0 It was quite wonderful to see, and we… Continue reading Merry Christmas<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moncrieff-in-michigan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moncrieff-in-michigan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moncrieff-in-michigan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moncrieff-in-michigan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moncrieff-in-michigan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=597"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/moncrieff-in-michigan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":598,"href":"https:\/\/moncrieff-in-michigan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597\/revisions\/598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moncrieff-in-michigan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moncrieff-in-michigan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moncrieff-in-michigan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}