But what I really want to talk with you about today is my Christmas Tree. Sometimes you have to make the best of the little things in life.

     On the Sunday before Christmas Sunday I was filled with concern over something completely out of my control. A Family member had just had a biopsy done and we were waiting for the results back from the lab. The Doctor was not very hopeful of good news. So I knew, that Sunday morning, that one of two possibilities lay ahead of us; Either a Winter marked with surgery, chemo-therapy and radiation treatments, or a Winter of the usual relative down time that goes with this season on a Farm.

     When I came home after visiting folks at the Newburyport Farmers' Market that morning, I looked out the window at a rather forlorn looking balcony that is always open in the Summer. And I thought to myself 'we haven't had a Christmas Tree since all the Young Folks went about their ways'. And then I realized that we hadn't fed the Birds in Winter for about the same length of time. And I thought 'We are either going to have a tough Winter or a good Winter---but either way we can still enjoy watching the Birds at the feeder.'

     I was home alone for the morning and so I loaded our Bulldog, April, into my truck---along with a small pruning saw---and headed out along the Farm's perimeter road. At the entrance gate to the back pasture I stopped the truck. And in a very short walk I found just what I was looking for; three young saplings about six feet tall. A White Pine, a bare Red Oak and a Hemlock---all indigenous to the Farm, and recently come up after we cleared the road back in '08. I made short work of their two inch trunks with the pruning saw, loaded them and the Dog into the truck and headed for home.

     Arriving back at the house, April and I tied a rope around the young trees and hoisted them up to the second floor balcony. I lashed them to the railing with some baling twine to provide a little weather and Hawk protection for the Birds. I then rummaged around in the pantry until I came upon an old bird feeder. I cleaned the feeder up a bit and hung it from the hook on the balcony that normally holds a basket of flowering plants during Summer. I then headed off to Market Basket for some cheap---oops, excuse me---lower cost bird food and some Sunflower seeds. I filled the feeder, and by the time we all were in for the afternoon we had---you guessed it---Birds! Birds at an old feeder beside my Christmas Tree; a combination of Pine, Hemlock and a leafless Red Oak.

     Well, the biopsy results came back surprisingly negative, to our great relief. So, my Family is enjoying a good winter. And we are also enjoying watching the Birds again.