Today is chilly. The sun and blue sky are back, but they don’t mean much when it’s cold: pretty, maybe, but useless. My backyard is winter dreary. The trees are almost all bare branches. I can see every neighbor’s house again. The gray squirrels are back from vacation. I suspect they’ll be around the feeders more often as the paper noted a scarcity of acorns this year.

I have been far busier than I want. I like my sloth days, and they have been few of late. Today the car is going in for servicing which means I’ll sit and read and wait. I wouldn’t mind if the dealership was near stores where I could while away my time, but there is nothing there but a whole line of dealerships. I guess I’ll bring my iPad and try not to look disgustingly bored. Now if I can only keep my foot from tapping.

My backyard has three spots where lights go on every night. The one on the left is the bottle tree where small lights are in the bottles and around the sort of trunk of the tree, another is where tulip lights are stuck into the ground and the third is a metal post tilting a bit to the right with colored lights wound around it. The lights go on at 5 and off at midnight. I like looking out the window at them. They keep the dark night at bay for a little while anyway. If I could, I’d wind lights around all the trunks of my trees so my yard looked like a fairy land. I have a feeling, though, my neighbors wouldn’t be as charmed. They think me crazy for leaving my window lights on all the time. One even told me that.

It is no accident that December was chosen for Christmas. At the darkest time of the year, the world is filled with light and a sense of joy. Even now, in a sort of practice for the season to come, my living room has glass lights strung across my mantle. The glass lights covers are turkeys, Indians, Pilgrims and cornucopias. A lit gourd and a set of lighted twigs are in the coal hod by the fireplace. I light them every night.