Whateley and Nina taking their Christmas Letter to Santa

 

We will not be travelling for Christmas but we will be together, healthy and happy for the holidays.

“He saw clearly how plain and simple - how narrow, even - it all was; but clearly, too, how much it all meant to him, and the special value of some such anchorage in one's existence. He did not at all want to abandon the new life and its splendid spaces, to turn his back on sun and air and all they offered him and creep home and stay there; the upper world was all too strong, it called to him still, even down there, and he knew he must return to the larger stage. But it was good to think he had this to come back to, this place which was all his own, these things which were so glad to see him again and could always be counted upon for the same simple welcome.”

from The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

Spain 2020

"But it is a mild, mild wind, and a mild looking sky; 

and the air smells now, as if it blew from a far-away meadow; 

they have been making hay somewhere under the slopes 

of the Andes, Starbuck, and the mowers are sleeping among the 

new-mown hay."

from Moby Dick

 By Herman Melville

When the pandemic started my sister was travelling in Spain with friends. They were unable to fly home before the borders closed and spent the first 6 weeks in a high-rise apartment under lockdown. The people there treated them well. But it was justifiably quite restricted. When things loosened up in early May they were able to move to rented house in the country. When they got there the farmers were cutting hay an activity I associate with late July or August in Saskatchewan. A recent email indicated they had hoopoe in the area. They are certainly a beautiful bird and it looks like a lovely area. We are very happy that our friends and family are doing okay. 

https://www.andaluciabirdsociety.org/article-library/about-birds/171-hoopoe/