For those of you who are on my Christmas card/letter list: you've already gotten this letter so you can click delete ......... UNLESS you want to see the photos I've added. For those of you who are not on my Christmas card/letter list: This year's Christmas letter was so much like a blog post I figured if I'd gone to all the work to write it, I might as well post it.
December, 2016
Autumn lasted
so long this year I was beginning to wonder if we’d be eating Christmas dinner
out on the deck but as it turned out, one day I was digging in the garden, bits
of compost sticking to my sweaty skin, and two days later 12 inches of snow
fell. I fretted because we still had
half a row of potatoes to dig up but Dean was fretting about his 30 or so wild
turkey “children” because they weren’t eating.
Earlier in the day, as he had walked around the yard shaking his can of
birdseed, they’d followed him like he was the Pied Piper of Turkeyland and watched
as he spread the seed over an area he had lovingly cleared of snow so they
wouldn’t have to punch their ugly little beady-eyed heads through the snow to
find it. But instead of eating the seed
they just hopped around it, bobbing their heads up and down, squawking. I suggested that maybe they just weren’t
hungry but he assured me that they had
to be hungry. He hadn’t fed them the day
before when it was snowing so they’re probably
starving!! I thought they were just stupid.
After all, once they fly over the eight-foot high fence into our garden there’s
almost always one bird too stupid to remember how to fly out. When we see Mr. or Ms. Dim-Wit stuck in the
garden, we open the gate and shoo it toward the opening, only to watch the
pea-brain run right past that wide-open gate, poke its head through the fence,
discover its body isn’t following, run further, shove its head through the
fence, and on and on, until finally! the dingbat flies over the fence to
freedom … or the next fenced in garden.
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When we walked into this gallery the room was filled with objects made of antelope, deer and elk bone and my first reaction was, “seriously?” I came all the way to DC just to see more animal stuff? But it was all really pretty cool.
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| Really? This is art? Do YOU “get” it? |
We also learned how to ride the metro to where we really intended to go, and even got to experience the fear, racing heart and barely contained panic when, on one trip, the train door opened and a metro policeman bellowed “evacuate the station! Evacuate the station!”
Addendum to original letter ~~~~ We did actually do more than just go to museums and art galleries. The first weekend we rented a tiny (and from the groans we heard in the back seat apparently shockless) car which we drove to Chincoteague Island so Abby could get her beach fix ....
.....and Assateague Island to see the wild horses.
..... and finished the day by pulling up in style to a winery.
And now ... back to my original Christmas letter.
Jorge was only able to visit Abby once while she was in DC because he’s been busy finishing up the final statistics, lab work, analysis, writing and everything else he needs to do in order to complete his PhD in the fall of 2017. Who knows where they’ll live once he finishes and finds a job (if it’s DC we still have our metro cards!) but wherever it is, we’ll be brightening their lives with our visits.
1 comment:
With all those stone buildings back in DC, did Dean try to lick each of them to see what they were made of? Speaking of nerds, I think Al has finally finished licking building. Did you see the huge flock of turkeys in the Capitol building? I think they must have met while you were back there, although many are too dumb to fly over the fences there too. I think they are a special breed, called congressional turkeys.
Sound like a nice trip, Cathy. Great Falls really is a great place to visit, isn't it. More water in one small stretch there than in all of Wyoming. And it flows just a bit faster than the North Platte. ;-)
Good to read a blog from you. Keep at it.
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