Place holder.

Lucy dozed off on the couch once the game ended. We had been going through seed catalogs; she held our place when we got up to tend to things.

Same game, different location.

Tug o’ war continued in the living room. We finish drying laundry on a rack in the living room and Fitzi was inside the duvet cover tent’.

Tug o’ war.

Lucy (left) and Fitzi play tug o’ war. We are so fortunate that our dogs get along so well.

Traditions.

As my blog title states I used to live in Texas. Like most, if not all, folks who grew up in, or lived for a substantial part of their life in any part of the world, there were traditions. 

One of those traditions was eating ham and black-eyed peas on New Year Day, because it was a kind of tradition in the southern US that this meal was thought to bring good luck in the new year.

Carrying on a tradition can provide familiarity and a sense of ease in unsettled, unsettling, times. So we had ham and black-eyed peas for dinner yesterday. Behold.

And it was good. Although the presentation was different from my childhood plate, the gist – ham and black-eyed peas – was there.

We will see what 2022 brings. I hope it brings you good fortune.

I will (and did) gladly accept . . .

We went for a good walk at Rondeau Provincial Park on New Year’s Eve. What was a dank, dark, gloomy day at home became an agreeable day at the lakeshore. While some might have grumbled a bit about the total absence of snow, I will (and did) gladly accept what The Maker Of All Things saw fit to grace us with that day.

On the beach.

We made a day trip to Pinery Provincial Park on Boxing Day. The weather was blessedly quite benign for late December, so we strolled on the beach. An earlier visitor built this structure out of driftwood they obviously found.

Skittered.

A Dark-eyed Junco skittered across a porch step after a recent snowfall.

I want to thank you, my dear readers, for visiting my blog. I also want to wish you merry Christmas, joyous Kwanzaa, hope you have had a happy Hanukkah, Happy Holidays, an excellent solstice, and a healthy, prosperous 2022.

Blast from the past.

I stumbled across this photo from about 1999 of a guy and his dog.

Bird watching.

I have participated in Project FeederWatch since 2008. From November to April, I put out a bird feeder and once weekly record the birds that visit.

I started last weekend. On that very mild weekend I recorded four birds – three American Goldfinches and one House Finch. It’s a little colder this weekend and there has been much more traffic. 

This photo of a Red-bellied Woodpecker is from last year. Tomorrow, I might be able to capture a photo of a feathered visitor.