It's beginning to look a lot like ...

 Christmas decorations to buy, take home and make your home festive, have appeared at a number of retailers. Christmas catalogs are filling our mailbox. We're working on and starting to coordinate Christmas lists with family members. Today we brought home a couple of poinsettias to park on top of the piano. Tomorrow we'll take a look at one of the local floral and nursery shops and see what looks appealing. The Better Half got a jump on the season several weeks ago by surprising me with three live holly stems (plants). We've not killed them yet (although we did commit a sin of overwatering). [Note to self: take pictures of holly soon.]

signs of the season: poinsettias on the piano

Photo by J. Harrington

Most years getting the house decorated for Christmas has seemed as much a chore as a treat. This year feels different. We think we know what's going on: we're just plain weary of being angry at our country and our countrymen.  Four years is a long time to cope with the consequences of corruption an incompetence at governance. This holiday season the "real" Christmas, invoking peace on earth, good will towards men, will finally arrive for many of US not on December 25, but on January 20, 2021.

winterberry, with leaves, in September

Photo by J. Harrington

Meanwhile, it's getting to be time to see if we can forage some winterberry to add brightness to evergreen boughs. Supporting our local florists needs to be complemented by some yule decorations we actually harvested ourselves.

Flame-Heart

Claude McKay - 1889-1948

So much have I forgotten in ten years,
  So much in ten brief years; I have forgot
What time the purple apples come to juice
  And what month brings the shy forget-me-not;
Forgotten is the special, startling season
  Of some beloved tree’s flowering and fruiting,
What time of year the ground doves brown the fields
  And fill the noonday with their curious fluting:
I have forgotten much, but still remember
The poinsettia’s red, blood-red in warm December.

I still recall the honey-fever grass,
  But I cannot bring back to mind just when
We rooted them out of the ping-wing path
  To stop the mad bees in the rabbit pen.
I often try to think in what sweet month
  The languid painted ladies used to dapple
The yellow bye road mazing from the main,
  Sweet with the golden threads of the rose-apple:
I have forgotten, strange, but quite remember
The poinsettia’s red, blood-red in warm December.

What weeks, what months, what time o’ the mild year
  We cheated school to have our fling at tops?
What days our wine-thrilled bodies pulsed with joy
  Feasting upon blackberries in the copse?
Oh, some I know! I have embalmed the days,
  Even the sacred moments, when we played,
All innocent of passion uncorrupt.
  At noon and evening in the flame-heart’s shade:
We were so happy, happy,—I remember
Beneath the poinsettia’s red in warm December.

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