Out, Out Damn Scot!

As quickly as it came, so it leaves us.

We are now past the week between, so yesterday was time for the temporary arboreal winter guest to move on. Unlike a human guest he didn’t start to smell after three days. Quite the contrary, he’d started to lose his fragrant appeal.

And needles. Boy was he losing needles.

Our tree this year was a somewhat unusual affair, as these things go. Though lovely when seen in a dark room all lit up, by light of day things were less ideal. It was the fullest, loveliest tree of its kind remaining at the Christmas tree forest area of the Peru big box hardware store, to be sure. Still, it’s trunk had grown with an odd, atypical bend to it that started at the base and continued up through to its spire.

Here it is, unlit and undecorated, in the morning following an apparent overnight, feline-based adventure:

For context, that "blanket" piled in the corner on the left side of the picture is the tree skirt, which had been around the base of the tree. One can only imagine the amount of effort the cat spent running in place needed in order to jettison it that far away from the bottom of the tree. It probably took only a few seconds, but I’m sure it seemed a lifetime from the cat’s perspective.

But that’s not really what I wanted to show you. If you look at that picture you get a nice sense of the beginning of arc of the trunk. I’ve illustrated it further below:

This meant that, once it was up and we began to decorate it, MLW took to referring to it as our "drunk" tree. Indeed, like many drunk uncles before it, I did have to go in and offer additional support to get it to remain in some semblance of an upright position (this is why you see the dumbbells there - they aren’t remnants of a workout session).

But its problems persisted, albeit in different form, once it was up and standing. Though we cut a section off of the bottom and watered it regularly, it always seemed a bit dried out. Reaching in to the tree to put on lights or hang up an ornament would result in raised welts on the unprotected forearm. And many of the branches seemed to give way to the weight of even the lightest of ornaments, drooping and dropping at a rate heretofore unseen. It was almost as if this bent little tree had decided to do its own anti-Christmas tree protest, engaging in its own form of civil disobedience. Thoreau would have been proud.

Or, you know, maybe it just wasn’t as healthy as it could have been.

At any rate, come time to remove the tree, one quickly realizes that it’s bigger going out than it was coming in. I think I (sadly) go through this revelation every year as I reach the first doorway and am briefly perplexed at how it is now bigger than the passage. And again this year I have to have MLW remind me that it was netted down when I brought it in. (I would like to think I’m not a dumb person, but then things like this happen...). But the tree has to go out and, while I’ve considered buying one of those contraptions for wrapping the tree at the end of the season, it seems a bit of an extreme purchase for something one would use once a year. Besides, the branches bend towards the top, so as long as you take it out trunk first, the difficulty is minimal.

Right?

But this year our disobedient tree protested more than most, and left us gifts. Lots and lots of gifts:

This didn’t stop me. No - that recalcitrant fir (it was a scotch pine - and you know how Scots are)) is now out on the burn pile. But it does leave one wondering for just a moment whether there could be some alternative purpose to which one could put all of those needles. Is there some sort of artisan craftwork, some sort of Etsy store offering that incorporates pine needles? They sell pillows full of barley hulls now, maybe I could offer up pine needle pillows. Granted, they’d be profoundly uncomfortable, but they would be hand-crafted...

Holidays at the Homestead

It won’t be a white Christmas on the prairie this year - not unless little patches like this, the functional equivalent of Old Man Winter’s snow comb-over, count:

This little bit remains due to a combination of drifting and fortunate shading, clinging on despite temperatures that have drifted up near the mid-century mark over the past couple of weeks. It’s made it through the solstice, and though we are a couple of days away from Christmas, a bit of it might remain on the holiday itself, so perhaps technically...

White Christmas or not, however, the decorating for the holiday season proceeds in this old house. This is always a somewhat nostalgic affair for me, given that this home figures as part of the holiday celebration for the majority of my life. When my grandparents lived here we would come over for Christmas Eve, after the service at Immanuel Lutheran Church (which always ended in a candlelit version of Silent Night - as it should be). There we’d have a light dinner which we, as children, wolfed down in anticipation of going into the living room so we could start in on the important part of the evening - the opening of presents.

For the purists out there who are now recoiling in disgust at the opening of presents the night before Christmas, take heart - these were the pre-Christmas presents. This was our gift exchange between family - aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents. We also did Christmas morning, but that was for the gifts from Santa (Sometimes resulting in an uncharacteristic awakening at, say, 4:00 AM...).

Those Christmas Eve celebrations mostly took place in the living room, and we have, in past, decorated in that room. This picture is from Christmas 2012, with the tree in the spot that Grandma Marie usually chose - the Northwest corner of the living room:

Most years, though, we have gone with the placement in the dining room. This room has a large picture window that, itself, replaced a former bay window (the bay window was, reportedly, a "leaker"). The space lends itself nicely to the tree display, and the window offers a backdrop night and day:

Usually our decorating has been limited to the tree and a few knick-knacks scattered around the house. This year, however, the determination was made that something should be done with the front stairwell. It’s a (the) Central feature of the house, but figuratively and literally. In its unretouched presentation it was meant to make a statement:

And this year that was dressed with garland and lights:

I must admit that I cannot take credit for these things. The how and the why of them is largely and capably determined by MLW, with help from the kids. My role primarily involves lifting and moving and placing of things under her wise direction. And to give credit completely where it is due, MLW both conceived of the garland and placed it on the stairwell. There my role was simply to come home and appreciate.

If there is a challenge to all of this - aside from keeping the cats from taking it all down - it is finding a sufficient number of outlets, correctly placed, to allow for the lighting. The front hallway is a particular puzzle, as outlets in the downstairs portion are as absent as belly buttons on an angel.

Fortunately, There are two outlets in the upstairs hallway, both to the front of the house near the stairwell opening. Getting anything like this light display to work in there is an operation that deserves extra-credit.

In the winter months - especially now, during the darkest time of the year - that stairwell is a dark place much of each day. The kids, who occupy the rooms at the top front of the house and are the primary passengers of the stairwell, are already preparing their arguments for keeping the garland there year round...