It's Late In The Season

It was late in the Season, but I scurried to downtown Roanoke for a last minute gift.

The little red farm truck was there selling live trees, wreaths and greenery for those who had yet to don their home with the fragrance of a forest.

You simply can't beat the look, hustle and bustle of an old downtown that takes you back to days of yore, beeping car horns and shoppers scurrying across  the busy streets.

Pay to park lots, parking meters, and high rise parking buildings help to manage the scenes, and if my husband could survive there, I would choose to have an old. small apartment over a store.

The lifestyle would suit me well.

My little Elf On A Shelf girl would have come along,

But downtown simply had no place for horse parking.

Neighbors stopped by with goodies in a cellophane wrapped box,

just one more thing for us to eat!  But we love that we are surrounded by good people.

 

A pretty flower arrangement from my husband's mother arrived, and it's nice to know that at 87 she still thinks of us each Christmas with a display that brightens our home.

Rowdy loves the red and green of Christmas and hiding directly within it is a game he plays each December.

And he was nice enough to think of his girlfriend, Izzy, and brought a matching Christmas scarf home for her from his visit to the vet.

They are simply stylin' in their pinecone neck scarvess.

 My husband's present arrived a few weeks early this year and parking it beneath the tree was a problem, so we parked it in the driveway instead.  This photo was the last one taken before those golden leaves in the background fell to the ground from a windstorm followed by the first snow of the season.

So in early December we said goodbye to the golden leaves and hello to the snow of winter.

 

But snow never gets us down.... as long as we can get to the grill life is good!

 

The lights come on with each sundown and  cast their reflections on the rainy, wet driveway,

and we ooh and aaah when we step outdoors with the pups.
It's only right that we should enjoy them, since our home is hidden from the road and only those two homes we share our driveway with can see them.

And my husband brought us home a pink poinsettia from the grocery store this week, a must have each year at this happy time.

I'll say goodbye for a few days now as each and every one of you enjoys YOUR gifts of the Season

and time with your loved ones next to the warmth of your heart fires

and Christmas trees.

Merry Christmas to all!!  

See you soon.

No Book Banning Allowed

Along the south side of our driveway sits a small tree, planted in the area of our well by the previous owners of this home.

 It has never been a tree that impressed me much..

sort of a shrimpy little thing, and to be honest.....

I've never cared for it much.

But this year, when we had the stone walls and the stone columns built, my husband, being the electrical engineer that he is, thought ahead to Christmas and Christmas lights and installed electrical outlets on the columns.

So, now we have electricity that he can run along the wall and out to some of the trees this time of year.

 So, tonight the shrimpy tree looks like this!

 He's got his party pants on for the Season.

 A big thank you to ME for driving to Lowes and getting the extra lights needed....

 AND

a big thank you to my husband for being the installer of it all.

The lights make me consider sitting out in the cold night air just to look at them,

but NOT.

An interesting bit of info:

When my husband was a kid... probably thirteen or fourteen years old, a neighbor came to him and told him he wanted him to help wire his house... because every kid at that age does electrical work, right?

The kid, my future husband, had no clue how to do it, so he went to the library, checked out a book on 'how to wire a house', read it, and proceeded to wire the man's house.

Not kidding!!

LOL

Cool story, huh.

It's a great example of why no book should ever be banned.

Happy Thanksgiving and looking forward to a shiny Christmas season.

*all snow images are from last winter*