Dec. 22-28, 2025

Weather | 12/22, cloudy, 29°, 52° | 12/23, sunny, 37°, 58° | 12/24, cloudy, 33°, 52° | 12/25, fog, 41°, 53° | 12/26, cloudy, 50°, 56° | 12/27, fog, 40°, 47° | 12/28, 1.25" rain, 15°, 57° |

• Monday, 12/22: Deer Blind, Christmas Goodies, & Swans
  • I walked down to the Wood Duck Deer Blind and removed the lauan top off the blind. The lauan board is an 1/8-inch thick. It's strong. The last time I looked at the blind, several inches of snow bowed that board down in the middle. Today, it was level, again. While I was there, I walked around viewing things. The pond is frozen at the south end. There aren't many deer tracks. A large oak tree blew over up the hill from where I once had a deer stand.
  • Mary baked a batch of butterscotch chip/oatmeal cookies. She also made some frozen chocolate peanut clusters. Tasty testing was done by all.
  • I split the rest of the red oak firewood and stacked the wood in the woodshed.
  • At one point while inside the woodshed, I heard trumpeter swan calls and jumped outside to watch six swans flying over our north timber. Mary also heard swans when she got the mail. A couple days ago I noticed one swan that was dusty colored. I read online that a swan with that color is a juvenile. 
  • We watched two movies, which were Babe (1995) and Patrick Stewart's version of A Christmas Carol (1999).
  • I'm noticing online that Fairbanks has experienced several days in December with temperatures below -40°.

• Tuesday, 12/23: Shopping
  • I shopped in Quincy. All stores were stuffed with shoppers. Lunatic drivers were zipping around, leaning on their horns, and going from 70 mph to zero in two seconds at stop signs and stop lights. Brake pad business must be a big thing in Quincy, IL. The Sam's Club checkout lines were so massive that I had to go a couple aisles back from the front to walk across the store. I bought an extra chain for the small chainsaw at Farm & Home. The old chain spun off of the bar last year, bending several drive links, resulting in the chain not fitting correctly on the bar.
  • Mary uncovered the winter greens that were under two layers of plastic and blankets for several days. There is a bunch of frost burn, but the kale looks very good.
  • I watched three V's of Canada geese fly right over the house just after sunset. There are online reports of dead geese in fields just east of Quincy. They're probably cases of bird flu deaths.
  • Katie bought a pair of classic cross-country skis today (see photo, below). She said they have skins, which involves small hairs on the middle arch of the underneath of the skis that grip the snow. Skins came out about four years ago, replacing fish scales on composite skis.

  

  Katie's new cross-country skis.

• Wednesday, 12/24: Christmas Eve, Game, & Movies
  • Right after handling chickens this morning, we saw a barred owl sitting in a maple tree in the east yard.
  • Bill arrived right at noon. He's visiting until Sunday.
  • While walking back from getting the mail, Mary spotted a freshly killed large deer mouse on the east side of the lane. It wasn't there when Mary and I walked to the mailbox, so it was killed moments earlier and we scared away whatever had it. Mary thinks it might have been a mink, since it was near Bluegill Pond. 
  • Mary made a cherry crisp.
  • We did our Christmas Eve smorgasbord, featuring 13 varieties of cheese. It was really good.
  • We played a game of Triopoly. I had a monopoly on two Minneapolis properties that Bill landed on many times throughout the game. I won.
  • We enjoyed a 1.5-liter bottle of 2023 blackberry wine. It was good.
  • We watched two movies that Bill selected, which were A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965), and Kate and Leopold (2001).

• Thursday, 12/25: Christmas Day, Cats In a Box
  • Bill, Mary, and I opened Christmas presents after eating breakfast. Gifts included lots of books, movies, and documentaries. A large Home Depot box that held some pry bars that I got from Katie was a huge hit for the cats. An empty box to a cat is a wonderful gift in itself.
  • We postponed a wienie roast that we had planned, because it was too foggy and wet outside.
  • We played several games of Sorry!
  • We enjoyed a 1.5-liter bottle of 2024 cherry wine. 
  • We watched two movies. Mary picked out A Room with a View (1985) and Bill selected Greyhound (2020). Both are good movies. The second one stars Tom Hanks, who also wrote the screenplay. It's based on a C.S. Forester novel called The Good Shepherd, about a U.S. Naval commander of a destroyer group escorting a convoy to England from German U-boats in the North Atlantic in 1942. It's non-stop action.

• Friday, 12/26: Boxing Day Wienie Roast
  • Mary moved the two sheets of plastic that were next to the winter greens (once covering them) and stretched them out in the machine shed to dry. She also stacked bricks that held the plastic and blankets over the tubs of greens to behind the woodshed.
  • Mary repotted the two amaryllis bulbs. There were no roots under the smallest bulb. We'll see if it survives.
  • Mary poured a 40-pound bag of sunflower seeds into buckets and put them inside the coop for the chickens.
  • I ordered fly tying items (several spools of thread and dubbing wax) in preparation for eight online Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) fly tying sessions that I'll take in through January and into February. I also ordered a fly tying book entitled Favorite Flies and Their Histories, by Mary Orvis Marbury. This old book goes for as much as $40. I got it for $7.19 from Abe Books.
  • We had a wienie roast outside after I built a fire on the concrete pad next to the mulberry tree in the west yard. Even though it was mostly cloudy, we saw a few moments of sunshine. Some tufted titmice visited us in the top of the mulberry tree. One had an acorn in its beak.
  • We saw trumpeter swans flying over us in the afternoon. Bill also saw some when he took a noontime walk.
  • I received a package in the mail from MDC of fly tying materials for the upcoming classes, all in sandwich bags with labels on each bag indicating the type of fly it will be made into. Included in the manila envelope was a photocopied booklet of each fly to be made, along with directions, and a tentative schedule of dates and which flies will be tied during each class. The accompanying letter asked that I check to make sure materials for each fly in the booklet were included in the package, so I checked them off and emailed back to the MDC instructors that materials for the last fly in the booklet were missing. I'm looking forward to the classes.
  • I looked through a bunch of new books that Mary got for Christmas, as suggested by Bill. He gave several of them to Mary.

• Saturday, 12/27: Yummy Crock Pot Venison
  • Fog set in for an all-day weather event.
  • I called Mom. She's in Glasgow, MT, helping Hank, who is recovering after a colon operation. They've had several times when freezing rain turned to snow, so country roads (that aren't main highways) and city streets are icy.
  • Katie tried traditional cross-country skiing for the first time today and found she was a natural at it. Others, who were skiing with her, were surprised to find out that it was her first attempt at this kind of skiing.
  • Mary picked the last of the kale from the winter greens. We enjoyed it in a salad with our main meal. Mary also put additional hay in the coop for the chickens, since colder temperatures on forecast.
  • Mary made a meal of crock pot venison and freshly-baked French bread. It was an amazing feast.
  • Mary heard snow geese flying above the fog. They were heading due south. 
  • We played several games of Michigan Rummy. Mary won. 
  • We watched a movie selected by Bill. It was The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013).

• Sunday, 12/28: December Thunderstorm
  • Mary and I woke up to flashing lightning and several cracks of thunder. We zipped around the house and unplugged appliances. Heavy rain fell for several minutes, giving us 1.25 inches. After a high of 57° in the morning, temperatures dropped throughout the day and into the nighttime hours until it was 15° at bedtime. We even got a dusting of snow. Strong wind gusts to 41 mph blew after dark, sometimes shaking the house.
  • Bill left for his St. Charles apartment around 1 p.m.
  • I scanned through the rest of the books that Mary received for Christmas.
  • Mary and I enjoyed tea and I finished reading the 15th Alexander Kent novel, Success to the Brave.