Getting Ready for the Holidays

Some time on the weekend after Thanksgiving, I suspect most of us start thinking about decorating and changing over the house for the winter holidays. We're not big here on decoration, but we do find ourselves sprucing up for the darker days to come.


Out in the yard, along the creek, our winter tree has been sitting all summer, covered at one point with vines and tall weeds. But now it is visible again, and its time to take it out and make it pretty.

We haul it to the front porch and adorn it with lights and cuttings from the persistent fall blooming plants. Over the season, it will pick up additional decorations most likely.


This year we are lucky. Although its windy today it is warm for November. High of 37 degrees, sunny and lovely outside. We did lights on the two shrubs along side of the deck instead of on "Charlie Brown" - the small scraggly but healthy blue spruce (Picea pungens 'Iseli Foxtail') that we bought in a pot 6 or 7 years ago at this time and used for a Christmas tree. We had to heel it in for the rest of that winter, and hoped that it would survive to be planted. Well, survive it did, and now I wonder if we will really want a large spruce just south of the house in another 10 years. Would be very hard to cut it down... More on Charlie Brown later.