December 1, 2019
My dog, Amanda, and I were home alone last week; actually, my cat , Samantha was quietly napping upstairs.
Sweet Amanda barks when deer are close by, but this evening her hair stood on end, her barks were fierce and furious as she put her front paws up on the kitchen sink, a rare occurrence indeed.
I turned on the outside lights. There, ambling slowly across the back deck was a big black bear, about 400 pounds, not in the least perturbed by the ruckus made by Amanda, perhaps looking for the bird seed feeder I had not yet put out. Last year, three of the four squirrel proof bird seed feeders were stolen by bears.
December 3, 2019
From early Sunday morning, December 1st through three a.m. Tuesday, the 3rd, it snowed. We got about two feet. This is the view from the kitchen window: 
Today, Tuesday, 12/3/19, is in the thirty something degree mark, the sun is shining, but by three p.m. the temperature was dropping below freezing.
Worked off some of the Thanksgiving feasting through many rounds of shoveling; my arms ache only very slightly today. Good winter exercise. Living in a winter wonderland.
I put out the one bird seed feeder I have left as the snow fell, scattering some seeds on the ground as I had seen the junkos shaking the Rosa Rugosa out back for the rose hips, some of which I harvested and some of which I left for the birds. They shook the hips open, pecking at the multitudinous seeds scattered on the ground.
The junkos were the only bird species to take advantage of the seeds.
Blue jays had been around, scrounging around in the window boxes where dill and coriander had been growing. Where were the others? So worrisome since about three billion North American birds have been lost, but today the titmice arrived, along with the first chickadee. Let’s hope more discover the black oil sunflower seeds since much is buried under a blanket 0f white.
