With the holidays fast approaching and the house nowhere near ready for a houseful of kids and grandkids, my outdoor time is going to get greatly curtailed. I'm hoping that it won't become necessary in the next few days to either temporarily suspend this blogging endeavor, or wind up documenting the holiday preparations, which would include everything from defrosting the pork loin to scrubbing the bathrooms. Today was more about cleaning than trekking, but I did manage a few minutes outside with the Vivitar macro-zoom, and in the course of zeroing in on suitable natural history subjects, I noticed that the Witch Hazels, which yesterday I declared past-the-flowering-season, were, in fact, not quite ready to call a halt to blossoming. This one, which is not, by a long shot, the last of its blooming ilk, was happy to make a liar out of me. With Santa looking on, I hope the inadvertent fib won't be counted against me in the "naughty or nice" assessment.