Joyce and I finished wrapping our Christmas presents Saturday morning after breakfast. Joyce had already done a few but there were some large, odd-shaped items that were better handled by four hands rather than two. Later we took Barbara Howard one of the yummy strawberry bread loaves Joyce had baked and visited with her a while. The day started out chilly but there was little wind and there was some nice sunshine so we took advantage of the nice weather to work on cleaning up the garden. I had tried last weekend to get the shredder started without success but Bryant the Wizard said to take the air filter off and put in a couple of teaspoons of gas right into the carburetor. Sure enough, it started up. I had to do that several times before it would keep running. I guess it had been a couple of years since it was started. Anyway we shredded some of the garden growth, which is quite dead and brittle now. We didn’t finish but we made a pretty good start.
We enjoyed a nice visit with Sister Kathryn who was in town Monday to attend the service for Ethel Clark’s. The service was modest but nice and we got to see some people we hadn’t seen for muy decades. We had dinner a the neighbors so Kathryn could enjoy the ambiance of the best eatery in town, in my opinion. Friday evening the neighbors joined us for pizza. We had a nice fire and played charades after.
I’m readying ‘Tis by Frank McCourt as an antidote to War and Peace, which I’m also reading and probably will be until doomsday. I read ‘Tis in 1999, I think, but maybe I didn’t because I don’t remember anything I’m readying now. I was looking through some books in the cave trying to find one to read after I finish ‘Tis and ran across a couple by Rudyard Kipling. The interesting thing is, he seems to have had a sort of logo which consists of a circle, his name and a swastika. The books were published in 1899 so I don’t think the swastika has anything to do with those who later made it famous.
We’re supposed to journey to Garland Christmas day but I’m told the Wylie household is battling the flu and that that might delay or prevent our visit. Also, there is a winter storm predicted for the time we would be traveling. We’ve learned to respect the problems inclement weather can cause so we’ll be monitoring the forecast with interest. It sure would be nice if that winter storm dumped a lot of snow on SA. So dry. Wednesday we had some of the wind that caused such problems in other parts of the state. Fortunately, we didn’t have the dust. Oh, there was the odd tree and farm animal sailing by but nothing that much out of the ordinary. When I left the office the cold front had hit and Joyce had all the fowl up but one recalcitrant guinea. A guinea out after dark is an ex-guinea so we got our poles and went in search of it. We found it down by Chris’s guinea pen and herded it back to guinea tower. During that time it started spitting snow. The silly guinea wouldn’t go into the tower at first and we had to chase it around the shop two or three times before it did, which was pleasant in the blowing snow. We were glad to get back to the house with all guineas accounted for.
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