We take a lot of pleasure in feeding birds and looking at them. Much to our surprise, when we pulled the car over so someone could stretch, there was this woodpecker on a tree right outside the car window. It didn’t seem much bothered by us, so we stayed and watched it for a while. Finally, we got bold and Rob crept the car closer, and it scooted around to the other side of the tree–but still didn’t fly away.

Rob and Malcolm feed the birds in our yard on a regular basis. They got a joint Christmas gift of some bird food and suet, so are looking forward to doing that soon.

Malcolm enjoyed the age-old excitement of mud-puddle stomping while his cousin was in her horse lesson. Rob turned his head for one minute and …..let’s just say we had to change the pants once they got home. So fun!

Rob, my niece Alissa and my nephew, Jake, all celebrated their January birthdays at a family birthday party. We figured it out that Rob and Alissa have not missed one co-party for the past 23 years, since she was 1 year old. That’s so special to us all! We had a family dinner. My sister cooked delicious steak (Alissa and Rob’s favorite), chicken curry, mashed potatoes (because that’s Alissa’s favorite), and broccoli. I made the chocolate cake (Rob and Alissa’s choice) and Alissa made the vanilla cake with Pokemon decorations (Jake’s favorite). Everyone had a great time.

My Territorial seeds came. I wanted to order them before December 31 because I had saved a postcard from my last order (last spring) that gave me 10% off my order before that date. I had gift cards from this Christmas, some left on the ones from last year, and some cash that paid for it easily. The 10% paid for postage and a few packs of seeds. I was delighted that a couple of old favorites were back on the available list, but we are going to have to try a new kind of Roma tomato this year. I picked out 2, both with the most disease resistance I could find, as I had a lot of trouble with disease last summer.

I had ordered the ones I wanted from Pinetree earlier when I first got that catalog and they are here, as well. The bulk of my seeds are from Territorial, but there are a few things I really like from Pinetree, and now I have them all.

I plan to do a post on seed choices later on. I’m planning a lot of posts, actually. I am so excited to say that I have a new computer that WORKS!!!! I’m so excited. I was gifted a significant part of the money for that for Christmas, and we made up the difference. It wasn’t just my blog that was no longer working on our old one….but now a lot of things work very well. I’m hoping to get back into the habit of blogging once again. It was so tedious on my iPad, since I can’t type properly on it, that it killed some of the joy in the process. I guess one-fingered hunt and peck with do that to a person:).