Holiday Countdown Week 1 ~ Greenery

Thanksgiving came so late this year that there wasn't the usual lull of late November before the Christmas rush began, but instead here we are catapulted from one holiday to the next. We actually got our tree in November this year (which is anathema in this house, but at least it was the last day in November), because M was home for the weekend and we didn't expect to see him again until the weekend before Christmas.



My brother and my sister-in-law were also visiting for the weekend, so they joined us on our tree-getting expedition, which every year involves tromping through the woods and sizing up several dozen balsam firs and making the same tired jokes about taking a 30-foot tall tree or a hemlock, and pagan ritual of thanking the tree for givin its life to bring greenery and light into our lives. The tree right now is standing naked in our living room, until another weekend comes when we can rearrange furniture and haul ornament boxes up from the basement.



Once we settled on and sawed down a tree, we collected some extra greenery for wreath-making. Most years we go to wreath-making party at a friend's house and/or buy wreaths from one of the kids. This year our friend had her party the same weekend my brother was visiting, and, though E and Z were supposed to be selling wreaths for school, they both forgot about it until the last minute and couldn't find their order forms.



This was my sister-in-law's first wreath-making experience, and she did much better than C and I did the first time we made wreaths, back in our first apartment, when we bent green boughs into somewhat circular shapes and wired them together. They were a little wonky but had gorgeous bows that C had brought home from the gardening company he worked for that year. The next time, we wired boughs onto a wreath form, but it took a few tries before we learned about making bundles of fir tips and wiring those to the form. We still don't have the symmetry thing down, but someday we'll get there.


The traditional Maine Christmas wreath is made of balsam fir, which is what we used as the base, but we also incorporated spruce, hemlock, and white pine, as well as winterberry and red dogwood stems, for variety.



C went even wilder, literally, with a disk of larvae chambers from a wasp's next, pine cones, sumac fruits, and a polypore mushroom.



My brother and sister-in-law live in a condo, so they couldn't take theirs home with them. It now hangs on the playhouse, providing a little cheer and extra cover to the chickadees who visit this feeder.



We may be slow to get this whole holiday train moving, but at least we've got the greenery, just in time for the world outside to turn white.