Christmas cookies

 I’m not quite in the Christmas spirit yet, in spite of a regular application of Hallmark Christmas movies. Sigh. It just isn’t the same when you can’t have people over. Still, I made some of the Christmas cookies. Just the sugar cookies and sour cream pockets, so far. I mean, you can’t have NO Christmas cookies, can you, even if you have few people with whom to share? I gave up on the Christmas bison this year, even though they are chocolate, and in my opinion, the only cookies worth the calories. But it’s not about me, and probably better that I don’t have a lot of my favorite cookies calling to me.

So I rolled and cut,

Rolling and cutting

Frosted,

Frosting--green for the trees and holly leaves

And put on jimmies (elongate) and sprinkles (spheres). Forget the piping of decorative frosting. No patience for that this year.

Sprinkles in lieu of piped frosting

Sunday was the last day of deer season in Illinois. As the afternoon went on, I saw turkeys again for the first time in several weeks. There were 10 toms in our field (nine are in the photo; one was off by himself). When I showed the picture to Terry, he said, “They’re toms! I can see the beard!” Turkey beards are on their chests. Don’t ask me.

Nine of ten tom turkeys. Note "beards" on their chests

In the field across the road there were 20-some hens and poults. The poults were a little smaller than the hens. They were too far away for pictures. Terry figured that deer hunters had moved through our neighbor’s woods looking for deer and flushing the turkeys instead (or in addition). Anyway, we were glad to still the turkeys still in the area.