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During a cold, sunny Saturday afternoon, our cell phones alerted us to an impending squall, which in fact arrived within the half hour. It cleared up almost as fast.

Our decision to stay in New York this weekend appears to have been justified.

Jen corageously determined that the pond was frozen solid, which made sense given the single-digit temperatures we’ve had over the past few days. While it might be a good day for skating, it’s also a good day for a fire.

We had a small but festive Christmas, with just Jen’s folks visiting. Sarah presented Daisy with her stocking, stuffed with a bully stick and a dried fish skin. It’s hard to say which smelled worse.

As is her custom, Sarah made crafts for everyone. She embroider these flowers for Rinda, crocheted coasters for Lew and trivets for Jen, and painted a beautiful blue jay for me.

Here is Sarah presenting Lew with his coasters.

And here is Jen with one of her trivets.

To celebrate her admission to my alma mater, I gave Sarah my old Colgate sweatshirt, with the reminder that what happens in the Colgate sweatshirt stays in the Colgate sweatshirt (literally, I’m afraid).

Here are Jen and Sarah, ready for the holidays after the hanging of the ornaments.

Sarah is on-trend with this ugly Christmas sweater from her pal Ainsley.

I put up a trail camera in the woods, but the only images I captured were of these two sourpuss hikers.

Ordinarily we wait until just before Christmas to bring home a tree, mostly because no one is around during the week to water it. This year, however, there seems to be a Christmas tree shortage. According to The Wall Street Journal, this is not the result of supply chain interruption but rather the long tail of Christmas tree growers leaving the business after the 2007-08 recession. It takes about twelve years to grow a Christmas tree.

Trying to get ahead of this, we visited Saltsman’s Christmas Tree Farm, a local favorite just outside the village, but they had only fifteen sad trees remaining. We got this one at Phantom Gardener on Route 9, which caters to weekenders — and where, if truth be told, we’ve gotten nearly every previous Christmas tree. At right you can see the gnomish Christmas tree lot attendant who once again regaled us with his story of when, as a neophyte tree wrangler, he accidentally imprisoned a family in their car by roping the tree through the windows rather than the doors.

Even Norman Rockwell might have been horrified by the amount of food we had at Thanksgiving this year, including a 21.5 lb. turkey, five pies (apple, pecan, pumpkin, hickory, and coconut), and three kinds of cranberry sauce (not readily distinguished from one another). We had Rinda, Erica, Lew, Geoff, Julie, and Stacey visiting, two of whom are vegetarians and therefore not helpful with the turkey.

Sarah gamely hoisted the aforementioned turkey when we picked it up Wednesday from Frank Vosburgh at Kesicke Farm.

The kitchen was a beehive of activity as we worked to produce the two cups of shelled nuts required for hickory pie.

Here is our burning bush (euonymus alatus), which lets us know that autumn is nearing its end.

It wouldn’t be fall without a picture of one of our more photogenic maples.