I have a favor to ask of all who visit here over the next couple of days. If you click on the link to Thoughts From the Middle of Nowhere over there on the right and down a bit, you would first of all get a chance to read my very favorite blog (other than this one of course). Then while you are there if you could take a few seconds and click on the link to the Weblog Awards and vote for that blog on the screen that you will see, I would be quite grateful. The author truly deserves to win the competition based on interesting topics, wonderful photography and great farmer political sense, (in my opinion at least).
Thanks in advance.

Here at Northview things have been quiet for a few days, something that is much appreciated. I actually got a chance to take the younger kids Christmas shopping this morning. (If we hit the store early on my oh-so-wonderful morning off, we can escape a little of the crowding that makes me so uncomfortable.) Alan bought me a second Sago palm to go along with last year's Christmas gift and Becky picked me out a lovely little Christmas cactus. I couldn't be more delighted. I would rather be given a plant than almost any other gift, except perhaps a good book. They also got their sister and dad taken care of and I managed to remember everything I needed except dog food.

Wild birds are coming into the feeders in large numbers now, sometimes twenty or thirty gold finches at once. They are like candles hanging on tube feeder candleabra when they feed in hungry flocks. There are not quite as many chickadees and titmice, but they make their presence known just the same. They swing, twittering and calling, from the twigs on the old locust and the clothesline in the yard waiting a turn a the goodies.

I get a chuckle out of the blue jays. It is good to have them back after their terrible decline because of West Nile disease. They swoop in, flashing brilliant blue, and just bursting with greed, about the middle of almost every morning. There was a big one here yesterday while I was doing the dishes and listening to Mannheim Steamroller's Fum. Fum, Fum (I bought the whole CD for that one song and listen to it a lot this time of year). He cleared the feeder area with a frantic alarm cry, then landed on the gound in the center and began to gulp sunflower seeds as if he were in a chug-a-lugging contest. Head thrown back and throat distended, he got outside of quite a pile before the other birds discovered that he had cried wolf about the danger and began to filter back to the yard.
The four chickens come in too and guzzle their share of the bounty. I wish the kids would find some place else for the rabbits so the hens could have their little coop back. They are still hiding their eggs where we can't find them, and the roosters crowing at the back door are rather annoying. They are more than a little annoying when they start crowing at 3:30 AM too. Even farmers don't get up that early.