This is the longest stretch I have not been blogging since I started this endeavor almost six months ago. It has not been for lack of topics but rather lack of time as the Christmas season can easily consume any spare moments. Making preparations for Santa more than makes up for the time I get back from a dormant garden. Christmas is a pretty big event for our family so between the cards (we are still sending snail mail), the gifts, the wrapping, etc. it is a frenetic season. And when it comes to plants, there is much that needs to be done.
Planning for Christmas begins back in August when we remove the amaryllises from their perch in the back of the garden and place them in the basement to go dormant. Regardless of my methods, I never seem to be able to get them to bloom around Christmas. This year I potted them up in early to mid-November with half of them still appearing dormant and the other half just beginning to leaf out. So there will be no amaryllis this Christmas but with any luck they will bloom in the next month or so.
Christmas cacti is a misnomer as ours bloom during Easter, Halloween and Thanksgiving. Every holiday but Christmas. While the professionals are much better than I in timing the flowers, there is only so much work I am willing to put forth with house plants. For us their blooms will be a surprise.
After Thanksgiving we start decorating in earnest, with this year compressed due to its late date. The big outside job is to put lights on a recently transplanted fir that we bought over a decade ago in memory of my mother-in-law, Stella. Every year the task has become more difficult as the tree has increased in size; this may be our last year of it having lights unless I want to break out my 30-foot house ladder. Or hire a cherry picker.
Even though it was difficult to hook up the lights this year it was a lot of fun with my daughter, Kathryn, and nieces , Helen and Lucy, as we tromped through the pachysandra tossing strings of lights around the different branches. It does look spectacular this year though because of all the snow we have had. I am not sure I’ll be able (or wanting) to take the lights down until the spring.
The next part of our Christmas greenery was to cut down a tree. We are fortunate to live in an area where there are lots of Christmas tree farms within an hour’s drive of our home. We don’t have any favorite farm but rather drive to a different place every year to be surprised. This year’s trip was a real Courier & Ives experience as we drove through the hills of western Connecticut surrounded by a landscape covered with freshly fallen snow. Trooping through snow while throwing snowballs at each other just added to the special time we had in selecting our tree this year. And while we cut down the tree over three weeks ago my wife Juana just put the finishing touches on her nativity under the tree this afternoon. It takes a lot of time to build a village.
I then planted up a couple of pots of paperwhites for a Christmas display. Like the amaryllis, I was late in potting them up and will not get flowers for at least another week, though their fresh growth is wonderful to look at. We wait anxiously for their sweet overpowering smell.
Wreaths were next on my list and I bought quite a few from the country store at Green Chimneys, where I volunteer. One of the employees makes wreaths daily so the shop emits the sweet smell of conifer sap. The fir wreaths had bits of white pine throughout giving them a more fluffy and festive look than the typical ones brought down from Canada. I also purchased a few holly wreaths and combined them on our front door and gate for a wonderful effect. Pinecone wreaths that I made years ago were also brought out for display as well as dried mistletoe.
Then there are the little touches. Thick mosses growing on rocks outside brought in for my wife’s nativity. A rope of princess pine, which is neither a true vascular plant nor true fern, used for accents. Pine cones placed around the mantle. Small holly shrubs and a miniature spruce replace long since spent summer annuals in window boxes. Sprigs of winterberry and viburnum are place to accent other plants with their delicate dried berries.
With the hope of not having to leave my yard for a Christmas tree, I planted a quartet of blue spruce seedlings. Three years ago we harvested a fir that had self-seeded in the yard. So now every year we plant a couple of seedlings with the hope of a Christmas tree selection in five years or so.
And what of poinsettias? My wife and I went on a small field trip to a local wholesale greenhouse and were mesmerized by a sea of this time-dependent plant (for a poinsettia to bloom it needs to be in total darkness for 15 hours for 45 to 60 days). Reds, pinks, whites, variegated combinations lined up ready for market. It gave my wife ideas of what she really wanted this year from this Mexican plant.
Tomorrow I need to run off and buy the last of our Christmas food. The plants are done for now. Except, like Thanksgiving, their ingredients will make up the vast majority of our winter feast. And with any luck I may be able to pull greens from the garden to eat (rather than display). That would be a real treat. I’ll put it on my Christmas list.
