Thanksgiving

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Well, one day late. I meant to get on yesterday to wish you a Happy Thanksgiving, but by the end of the day I was very tired and just wanted to relax.

Our son spent Thanksgiving with his girlfriend’s family so it was just EJ and me for dinner. We are estranged from our families (emotional abuse) so we do not spend holidays with any of them. EJ and I both come from large families. Holidays used to be very difficult for me without family to celebrate with. But over the years we’ve come to value quiet, chaos-free holidays.

EJ and I always make the traditional holiday foods. We share the labor so the cooking, baking, and clean up doesn’t all fall on me. EJ makes the turkey and yesterday he made two pies–apple and pumpkin. I made homemade rolls and the dough for EJ’s pies, as well as the side dishes. EJ cut up the turkey later while I did the dishes.

I usually wait until I see our neighbor-across-the-street’s solar light turns itself off before I go let the chickens out. After that, I go out to handfeed the chickadees and nuthatches before filling the feeders for all the wild birds Thanksgiving morning I went out to care for the chickens a little early. I was going to wait a few minutes before feeding the chickadees. If I go out to feed them too early, it takes them a while to come to me. I assume they need to wake up. However, when I came in from the chickens, the chickadees began to flutter in front of the windows. Some of them even clung to the window sills. They seemed to follow my progress through the house, moving from window to window to keep me in view. I took the hint and went out to feed them. As soon as I stepped outside, I was mobbed. I’m thinking that the word has gone throughout the forest that a nice human feeds birds because I swear that their numbers are increasing.

When we moved to our 5 acres in Northern Michigan, I started calling our place our “Enchanted Forest” because it was so beautiful and peaceful. It feels like our forest is getting more enchanting every year. I have deer and other wild animals wandering across our property. I have wild birds eating from my hand. The other day, I was looking at the videos from my trail cam. In one video, there were a couple deer grazing peacefully when, about halfway through, it looked like a fairy fluttered by. Now, some people might say that it’s just an insect, but it sure looked rather magical. I’ll let you be the judge. Here’s the video:

The National Weather Service forecast “intense lake effect snow” beginning Thanksgiving evening and continuing until Sunday morning. We could get a foot or more of snow with “locally higher levels.” If–or rather when–the wind starts to blow, travel will become “almost impossible.” So far we have about a foot and the snow is still coming down. It’s very pretty.

EJ kept checking the forecasts on Twitter/X yesterday. In the afternoon, he exclaimed, “The 1-2 feet of snow is just from lake-effect snow! After that, we are expecting a snowstorm with another foot of snow!” Later, “Meteorologists are saying that after that storm, we could get ANOTHER storm with another foot of snow.” Then, “They are predicting snowstorm after snowstorm. We could get 5 feet of snow by mid-December!” After we went to bed, before we fell asleep, I asked him if there were any weather updates, adding “Every time I ask, I hear we are getting another foot of snow.” EJ replied, “I don’t know. After five feet, I quit looking.” Lol.

I’m glad we went shopping on Wednesday morning. Our local farm store’s Black Friday sales began on Tuesday and they were having a good sale on bird seed so we went then instead of Friday. We both hate the crowds that flood into the storms on Black Friday. We are just not die-hard shoppers.

For the rest of the weekend, EJ and I plan to just stay home and watch the falling snow and the critters outside our window.