from one of your biggest fans.... Your photos never disappoint! Love your 'up close and personal' bird photos ... I agree w/all - I think your photos could easily be published for both subject and artistic quality... I love the photo cards I have of yours - And could never part with them because they're waay too beautiful. Lol thanks Jeanne for sharing your lovely work . Merry Christmas to you and your family! Jane

Babies and Puppies.... doesn't get any better and there are none here! Enjoy, enjoy! She is adorable!

Belated Merry Christmas to all. Especially to Triciae, who was on my mind a lot this holiday and will be during future holidays. Dear Wonder Woman, I hope you are doing well, where ever you are. Thank you for showing me what courage and strength and kindness are. We drove down to the Bay Area for the holidays. Christmas Eve we had dinner with our good friends in Berkeley, raw oysters with mignonette, cracked crab, and the traditional Buche de Noel. Last night we had dinner with other good friends in Richmond, tenderloin, mashed potatoes and a warm cauliflower-brussel sprout salad. I made half of the tenderloin, cut pieces 1" thick and tied them into rounds, pan cooked, with a sauce of reduced white balsamic vinegar, Muscat wine, shallots and garlic, butter, sauteed mushroom stems, blended smooth, then simmered over whole mushroom caps. No recipe, just made it up. Our hostess roasted the rest of the tenderloin with a red wine and shallot reduction. We were supervised by a friend who is a head chef at a large hotel and, for the first time in many years, didn't have to work on Christmas day, but was nonetheless pressed into service which he did with good humour. I've been negotiating a stressful matter at work for the past few weeks. As of Dec 24, we were uncertain whether our little business unit would be shut down and I had prepared myself to be jobless come Jan 1st. That all got resolved satisfactorily at noon on Christmas Eve, final document review pending, so for the first time in a month, I was able to relax and unclench. It was nice.

My brother and I used to call them pixies. One year my brother developed a rash, right around the time he was playing with one of the pixies my grandmother had. Naturally we assumed he was allergic to pixies and my mom threw out the ones she had-more likely it was from the spray snow on the tree -you know that kind of stuff was pretty noxious back in the 60's and 70's!