It came and it went

As it does every year, Christmas has now come and gone, whether we were ready or not. My festive season seems to get simpler as the years go by, so none of the run-up was too stressful. Despite never really going "shopping" as such, I acquired the "family and friends" gifts one way and another over the year, and with one exception also got them dispatched around the country in a timely fashion.

We did our usual family to-and-fro from one household to another on Christmas eve (game night, playing Joker/marble Pursuit -although we have a hand-made wooden board which is visually far superior to the one featured in this link), out to my local daughter's home for gift opening and breakfast on Christmas day, then back to our place for turkey dinner, with me going to the stables in between to help bring in horses and give Alpac his special Christmas beet pulp. One way and another, the entire day pretty much consisted of driving back and forth and food preparation and consumption. We also managed to squeeze in a pack walk with the dogs (our two Boxers and the mini-Dachshund we are baby-sitting) which is a first in many years for Christmas day as it's usually too cold for the dogs. We are sitting on or slightly above freezing temperatures these days so it's really very acceptable for outdoor activities.

One day last week I spotted this coyote in the ditch as I was driving to the barn. He was pretty relaxed, so I was able to get the car onto his side of the road, get stopped, and get the camera focussed on him. He gradually worked his way farther off into the roadside grasses, and the trio of shots below show how he just fades into the surroundings as he gets deeper into the grass. 

The lack of snow and warm temperatures here are really remarkable. Normally we'd be looking at 20 below C and snow cover, but not this year. I got shot two as I headed home from the barn last week. It features our barn man exercising his horses in the fields north of the stables. Those power pylons are a real blight on the skyline at the stables, but not much way to avoid them most of the time in pictures. 

Shot three shows what was the undoubted hit of this year's Christmas gifts in our family. My daughter bought this wonderful vintage typewriter (we think it's from the early 1930s) for my fourteen year old grandson Mark. Mark is all about "old style" things and has expressed interest in "real" typewriters for several years now. This one was an amazing find, sourced via the local Kijiji listings. The other keyboard gift for Mark this year was a solar-powered computer keyboard. I think he's just about got the bases covered now for keyboard technology, old and new.

We went down to the Mendel Art Gallery today to check out the shows, and took a little walk on the riverbank pathway afterwards. Another seasonal first for us was seeing a kayak on the river. Again, totally unexpected, notable, and really quite wrong in so many ways for Boxing Day.

Today was overcast with little light and low cloud cover right until late afternoon, when the sun emerged briefly before setting to give this wonderful light for photography. I was just leaving the barn at the time and took the long way home via the back roads so I could make the most of the photo op. Shot five is one of my favourites from this shoot.