But when I pulled up, the park seemed preternaturally quiet. I began to walk along the sideway and path parallel to the lake. Then a Northern Harrier took off and began to do its trademark slow, hovering flight 30 feet above the ground. Then I understood why the smaller birds were not spending time in the open field.
I had a good 90 minute walk. I did find a good number of birds in the little wooded areas that border the lake. I also saw some grebes and coots. Then I headed back towards home. The Northern Harrier was my first of this species this year, and brought my 2017 Collin County count up to 109.
I was going to stop at a new BBQ place in Farmersville, but it had a long line. I did stop at a Brookshire's grocery store for bananas and Powerade Zero. I finally got lunch in McKinney at a fast food chicken place. The fellow behind the counter was pleasingly polite.
When I got home, my wife and I decided to implement our plan to buy our Christmas tree. First we drove to our storage space and picked up our boxes of Christmas finery. We have more than none but fortunately not so much as to be cloying. We drove the boxes home. Then we headed to Plants and Planters in Richardson.
Plants and Planters is a place that is a great place to go for indoor plants or for shrubs in Spring. But at Christmas, they stock Noble Fir trees. We got our tree there last year. Their attentive customer service and ease of process makes up for the tree being a bit more expensive than at the chain stores. Sure enough, we got a great tree, got help with our stand, got it tied on top of our car, and made our way home in nearly no time. We put the tree up. We'll decorate it tomorrow.
We took Beatrice for a walk near 5 p.m. She loved it. The weather was perfectly warm and windless.
For dinner, we went to Fishmongers. We enjoyed our meals. Tonight we watched some of a dog show. We liked the Miniature Pinscher because he had swagger.
multi-grain cheerios and skim milk
fried chicken breast and thigh, green beans, french fries, 1/4 biscuit
salad, red beans and rice, shrimp and a bit of mahi mahi
from Dreamwidth, because two posts of the same text are twice as nice