We love the large pine tree outside our living room window, which is the center of attention.  I placed a suet cage right next to its trunk.  There are a steady stream of woodpeckers mostly downy who feed on the suet.  The squirrels also come.

The downy woodpeckers travel up and down its trunk seemingly at attention.  Only one bird is allowed to feed on the suet at one time.  The others make sure of that.  Sometimes there is as much as two or three downy woodpeckers on the trunk of the tree at one time.

Occasionally a red bellied woodpecker makes its entrance.  The sight of it makes me gasp.  It is a bigger woodpecker with an one inch red stripe that goes from the back of the top of its head to its nape of its neck (at least the male looks that way).  I had never seen one before and now they are regular visitors.

The white breasted nuthatch also likes the suet as well as the Carolina wrens who I have fallen in love with.  I did not know wrens could get that big.  Occasionally a cardinal will alight on one of its branches briefly.

We get occasional visits by the brown creeper who has a long curved beak and is a small brown colored bird who appropriately creeps up and down the pine’s trunk.  And these are only the birds we remember seeing.

This year a large branch was brought down by an ice storm which became our Christmas tree when I cut off part of it.  We used the rest of it for our tree.  It was one of the most beautiful trees we ever had lit up by several hundred multicolored lights.  Both of us love this tree and consider it to be our friend.

We said good-by to our Christmas tree last night.  It was an orphan tree we rescued:  an ice storm brought down a large branch from our large white pine and I sawed off part of it and brought the remainder in to use as a Christmas tree.

We first placed the trunk of it in a base and then we had to prop it up:  it sagged so we ran a rope from it to the ceiling and tied it down to the floor with the help of a basket moored to the floor by some weights.

My wife strung several hundred multicolored lights throughout it.  It looked absolutely beautiful lit up.  And we admired it several weeks.  It was one of the prettiest trees we ever had.

Tonight my wife stripped it of needles dropping them in a bucket.  She wanted to lay them in the flower bed.  We did not want to leave the bare tree naked and abandoned in our living room overnight so I brought it out and lay it outside for its final resting place.  It served us well.

We have a “rescue” tree for a Christmas tree.  You heard of others adopting a “rescue” animal, well we rescued part of this large branch that an ice storm ripped down from our large white pine tree.

It is kind of funny looking but I am sure we will never forget this Christmas tree.  It droops in one direction despite any efforts of us to right it.  It will temporarily live in our house near the window during the holidays.

The large branch was laying on the ground outside kind of forlorn looking.  Tomorrow my wife will brighten it up with lights.  We gave it another chance.