I’m home. And it feels good. Slept in my own bed. Walked out onto the porch this morning and looked at the pasture. Looked at the sky. Now for the rest of the day. I washed everything before I left my daughter’s home, so all I need to do is put things away, attach decals to guitar cases, and remember the good times.

In the first four Christmases after my wife’s death in 2020, I dressed myself and the house for a party in which one of the guests was gone. Children still came, friends still visited, but the missing soul was still missing. So, this year, when my daughter invited the family to her new home in Virginia, I thought it might be the perfect opportunity to start anew, do something fresh and different. I made my plans and left town and the undecorated house.

In the early morning, on a fine summer day, just as the sun is rising there can be a moment when the beach is all mine except for the tide and the shore birds. It's a sight quite literally never to be seen again, and being there to see it, to be the one to see it, fills me with quiet pleasure. It’s been that way all my life. And that's how it feels this morning as I stare off into the first day of 2025.

The stars on a cold clear night sure seem big and bright, and closer, too. As if they were just over the treetops. And last night as I left a friend’s house in the chill of the evening, I could see Orion’s belt, clear as day, and it felt as though I could reach up and unbuckle it, and as I drove through the dark, I surprised the moon resting on a hilltop, taking a break before it continued its journey into the night of a December sky.

I’m back in the saddle so to speak. Yesterday, I finished the repairs to a fence I started several weeks ago. I got the old sections securely tied to the new poles, and now we’re right as rain.

Digging postholes. I’ve done it all my life to varying degrees of success. As a new homeowner in the 70s one of the first things I did was put up a fence, for privacy in my yard.

I dug out another old posthole yesterday. This one had the complication of being right beside a second old posthole. So, there were two blobs of concrete and rotted timber. Talk about hard.

Some mornings I wake up and my words are right there in bed beside me. Then on some mornings, I find them sitting comfortably on the couch or hanging around the coffee maker.

The first of the four roof tins is in place. It took me a while. First of all, I realized I needed additional lumber for the rafters. More feels better and secure. Then I had to overcome an earlier mistake which came about because I got ahead of myself.

I watched my little bird go to bed last night. It landed on the birdbath. Surveyed its surroundings. Then flitted up to its little notch at the top of the cedar porch pole and settled in for the night.

An only upside in failing to sleep through the night is being able to walk out onto my porch and look at the pasture behind my house in the light of a nearly full moon. It’s a bonus when the temperature is in the 40s and there’s no breeze.

It’s a cold crisp morning in the Hill Country. The air is clear, not a cloud in the sky. The presidential election didn’t go my way, but the sun has come up every morning since and gone down as well. I’m disappointed, but it isn’t the first time, nor will it be the last.