Lace Lichen

The sun was shining from a cloudless sky, the recent rain sparkled on the new green grass, and the air was cold and crisp when Ozzie set out on our walk this morning.  I spotted this wisp of lace lichen fallen from the tree overhead and hanging from a newly pruned shrub. I'm always struck by the fact that one can't improve on nature when it comes to photo challenges, so I'm tagging this for Abstract Thursday.

We got our Christmas tree today although we haven't brought it into the house yet. The nursery just a block down the highway from us has a nice selection of trees,  a friendly group of brawny young men to tie the tree on top of the car and a beautiful shop full of ornaments, and poinsettias in shades of white, pink and red along with the usual offerings of fertilizer, snail bait, pottery and garden tools.

I may have used up OilMan's entire stock of patience for the week on the office reorganization, a very limited stock indeed when it comes to selecting a Christmas tree. Ever hopeful, he will walk up to the smallest, scrawniest tree and announce that he thinks it's perfect. That never works so I'll usually pick one which he says will never fit in the stand/through the front door/under the ceiling. That is the one we get and it always fits one way or another. Today was no exception and the mission was accomplished in record time, a fact that I thought should please OilMan but he seemed grumpy. I pointed out that if we got the little tree the only place we had to put it was on his puzzle table, which didn't strike him as a good solution.

We told the nice young man who asked if we needed help that we needed him to come home with us and carry the tree into the house and set it up.  For $20 he said, he would be happy to deliver it next week. It seemed worth it to me, but OilMan was too far into being grumpy about getting such a heavy tree to see that as a worthy solution. The brawny young man must witness these 'discussions' several times a day because he diplomatically wandered off while we 'discussed' it.

In the end, the brawny young man hoisted the tree on top of our car and tied it on while we went inside to pay for it. OilMan turned down my offer to pay the brawny young man to deliver it, but did agree to let me help him get it off the car.

We will postpone the battle of bringing it into the house and setting it up in the stand, which never fits, for another day. If he puts on the lights, which he also hates, I might  buy him a new puzzle....