Three Kings Started It

Despite this little white flower bravely blooming away in the backyard, winter came anyway.

The flower has a name but I don't remember it. (Lower mid-right.)

A couple days later the early morning looked like this...

Off to the side yard (left off camera), one-by-one each morning up to four cats come across the open adjoining barn area to parade between our dwelling and the next door neighbor's, each patrol timed a little differently so as to avoid encounters with each other in the narrows between the two houses. One old fellow of vast street experience lumbers through and systematically marks the bushes as he wends his way. A younger female occasionally makes a try for one of the resident squirrels so tantalizingly spiraling up and down the trees.

Advent is here and 2017 is close now to becoming history. Marge arrived in Charleston this afternoon safe and sound and without encountering serious problems with the eastern seaboard snowstorm. A text from her remarked on a couple of lonely Confederate flags flying out in the middle of nowhere. No sign of the holdouts who put them up.

Keoni is taking care of some gigs before he returns early next week. Aidan only has the days between Christmas and New Year's Day to kick back. A very short break for him. He went to work on a gingerbread house a couple nights ago and sent a picture...

...then, he ate it.

Before she left for the south, Marge made many batches of a confection that has the name "crack" in it. Crack Cookies I'm calling them. She unpacked an amazing pile of ingredients...

Marge gifted the cookies far and wide. We both got some tasty nibbles but exercised remarkable control of consumption before they went out the door.

Jeanenne has shared the latest from her kitchen island watercolor studio...

Several days later, Sandy sent a snap of her endeavor...

Now, who knew that these women, my sisters, would take up brush and pencil and turn out such good renderings! None of us are spring chickens and it's somehow wonderful this suddenly sprang forth. You just never know what might be in the next mile traveled.

Not long ago Carol posted Bouré and Daisy's happy, sleepy dog picture that she'd turned into black and white. These two were featured at the beginning of this blog--you might say the blog began because of them. They are best friends of my dear friends, Carol and Janie.

Bouré & Daisy.

The stores are full of people. I know we all cluck and complain about the commercialization of Christmas and while it's true there's a lot of money to be made from and spent on the gift part, maybe it's time to remember the three kings who got the ball rolling a couple thousand years ago giving fine gifts at the birth of a little boy, and the wonder about the star, and all those predictions from even longer ago, and everything else. Sort of cosmic when you think about it. So maybe the gifts are part of it. A marker, a talisman, a reminder.