CHRISTMAS IN THE AIR

I just stepped out onto the deck to sweep last night’s new snowfall away; it’s downright nippy out there.  Yesterday was a totally different story.  It was so balmy and bright I took a few minutes to sit in the sunshine and soak up the warmth.  The weather app on my phone says we will be back to that in just a couple days.  It kind of feels like Mother Nature has been partaking of fermented apples and can only manage a lurching stagger towards winter ... you know – one step forward, two steps back.

Eventually, though, we will all make it to Christmas so it’s time people start getting ready. By ‘people’ I really mean ‘me’, but go ahead and include yourself in this group if the circumstances warrant.

First on the list is gift shopping.  There are local trade fairs and craft shows to explore and home town businesses to support.  I’m not sure if it’s the age I am or that Covid restrictions have influenced what I think is important, but my sense of what’s necessary is not the same as it used to be.  Yes, there will still be gifts for everyone under the tree in 2021, but they will be smaller and more practical – no one needs more stuff for stuff’s sake.  The best thing about 2021 is that we will open these gifts together.  December 2020 was a very quiet day that gave us lots of time to think about what a dud of a day it is without the ones you love there to share it with.

The next thing on my list is writing a Christmas letter and getting it away to friends and family.  I know.  I know.  How old fashioned is that?  But, you know?  Everyone loves getting letters and the most effective way to get letters is to send letters.  Throughout my life I have transitioned from hand written pages to photocopied messages to the easiest form of all: a length-and-weight-doesn’t-matter email.  This year I am contributing to my Canada Post pension stability by snail mailing out 80 real, live, physical envelopes because there are photos to share.  They will hit the mail this week; another job done and dusted.

While I was grocery shopping the other day I noticed that eggs were on sale.  I immediately thought to myself that this was a push from the Christmas Baking Angels; it was time for butter tarts and poppycock and puff pastry lemon cheese tarts and mincemeat cookies and a bunch of other things with more calories than ingredients.  Also the boxes of chocolates, Turtles, Toffifee and all the other Christmas goodies are out.  I refuse to buy any of these until we are done the mini chocolate bars from Halloween ... another couple days should do it.

Decorating is done in stages.  On a beautiful day at the end of October I went out and strung lights through the branches of a huge evergreen tree, installed a set of lights around a pole so that it looks like another Christmas tree in the dark, and stapled my two deer to the ground so they wouldn’t blow over.  Everything worked 100% at the time but of course we’ve had that hurricane since then.  My looks-like-another-tree-in-the-dark illusion is half dead (broken wire somewhere) and there are several lights on the big tree that lost their coloured covers in the wind.  Because I stapled the deer in place they are still where I put them but I’ve had to go out and adjust wiring so the buck’s head lights up again. 

The next project will be the inside.  This may or may not be a big job depending on whether I can source a tree to decorate; apparently 2021 is not a good year to be looking for a tree.  It’s always a big job to fetch all the ‘trimmings’ from the attic, and even bigger if the grandkids are there to “help” grandpa discover treasures up there.  I may be getting too old for these shenanigans.

But, not all of the shenanigans.  Last year was a season of no shenanigans at all and once was enough for that.  I want the noise and confusion of five cousins over excited for Santa’s visit.  I want everyone complaining that there are too many goodies to be healthy – and eating them anyway.  I want the yard covered in toboggan and quad tracks.  I want the lights twinkling on the tree, and I want mugs of tea and quiet conversations after the kids have conked out for the night.

May we all be safe from illness, travel troubles, and whatever Mother Nature might throw at us.

Merry Christmas and Happy 2022!

 

SEASONAL DISARRAY

The days get shorter and the nights get longer.  Gone are the summer days so full of garden weeding and yard work that sleep comes looking for me, not the other way around.  These days the most exercise I get is vacuuming and letting the cat and dog in and out ... and out and in ... and in and out yet again.  I can’t decide if it’s neurosis or a compulsive disorder, or even who has it – the humans or the pets.

This is a time of seasons in flux.  There’s a little bit of everything out there.

Some days act like it’s still September and I can hang clothes out on the line to dry.  Halloween has come and gone but there is still residual candy around the place because, even though we haven’t had trick or treaters here in probably a decade I continue to buy the candy just in case.  Beginning earlier every year I purchase our supply, refreshing it as need be until the big day.  We wouldn’t want to be the household who hands out stale candy, after all.

So it is that in November there are still a few mini candy bars left – weirdly, the ones we don’t particularly care for – and I keep losing my favorite rockets candies under the wrapping paper as I get a start on Christmas gifts.

I took down the skeleton and spiders a week after I put up the outdoor Christmas lights.

Last week I stuck a poppy in my lapel and wondered how many of them I will lose before Remembrance Day, and how many times I will stab myself when I replace the lost ones.

The lawn mower is finally stored away but the snow blower hasn’t been attached to the tractor yet. 

My flip flops are still out and I don’t know where my snow boots are.  Do I even have some?  Didn’t I throw the old ones away because I decided I needed a new pair this year?

 I should go look.

Nah! I like living on the edge.

Even my flower beds look undecided with where we are at in the year.  Some of the tougher plants still have green leaves and flaunt their hardiness in the shortened hours of daylight while the more delicate babies are covered in straw and await a good covering of insulating snow to help them make it through the night.  Already I dream of what I will plant next year ... because I just really can’t help myself.  (There’s that neurosis vs. compulsive disorder question again.)

Yesterday I sat down to compose the 2021 Christmas letter making it the fourth writing project I have on the go at the moment ... what could go wrong with a scenario like that?  Let me know if this starts sounding like blurb for a vacation guide, okay?

For the first time in my life I am seriously considering buying an artificial Christmas tree.  Is this a sign that I am becoming being frugal? The price of real trees gets crazier every year; it will only take three Christmases to pay for the fake one I have my eye on.  At the moment I am stalled out wondering if Christmas will ever be the same if I can simply plug in the tree and the lights just come on?  It’s a long standing tradition in my family for the mom to go off the deep end trying to get all the lights to work at the same time. 

And, what will I do with all my lights that (mostly) work?  As you can see, this is not a decision to be taken lightly.

Meanwhile I continue to deal with my jumbled seasons.  I will honor the Remembrance Day services, if only on TV, but will also review my Christmas card list.  I’m fighting the urge to buy Christmas chocolates when the Halloween candy isn’t quite gone yet and it’s almost time to start Christmas baking.  On the other hand one needs to think about having all those calories in the house and how it leads to the same old New Year’s resolution I’ve made and broken for decades. (Again there’s that mental stability concern – doing the same thing over and over yet wanting a different result).

Well, enough of that, it’s supposed to snow tomorrow.  I think I’ll go hang out in my greenhouse for a bit, the remote thermometer says it’s plus 16 and I know it still smells a little bit like summer.