Topic: "Unbroken Circle" (7)
Occasionally, there comes a day in December when the winds are gentle and the skies are brilliant in blue. A pair of Cooper's Hawks perch in tandem between the warming of eggs and the search for food. Where Frodo has stacked detritus from the Spring that was the Shire, they stand silently in search of rodents preparing for the days to come when life itself hinges on the simplicity of warmth and food. Frodo lays his rake aside, and watches the watchers. It is time well spent.
Christmas lights are more numerous than in recent years, although the exhibits are not nearly as ornate as the days when the citizens of Middle Earth seemed to worry more about things long since forgotten. Delivery trucks and postal personnel are at the peak of efficiency and every customer seems pleased and patient. Empty houses stand as sentinels reminding all that there is a price to be paid for dreams gone awry, even on a warm afternoon, deep in December.
Mick, the Wonder Dog, catches the scent of his neighbor to the South, who asks Frodo every day about the spirits of his aged friend. Rassa, the young German Shepherd who lives to the East, crosses the street under the consent of her owner, and she touches noses with he who takes each day as it comes, and revels in the kindness of those who watch him parade with Frodo down the streets of the Shire, wishing that such walks would never end. Frodo knows, as do his neighbors in the Shire, that the morrow, or the day after, will bring more northerly breezes.
Today however, the bird feeders are under preventive assault, and Frodo is only too glad to fill each and every one.