The tease of a tree

Two weeks from today is the 2022 Winter Solstice (Northern Hemisphere). Locally at 3:48 pm. Days will start to get longer on December 22, but only by one second, and temperatures will lag. Normal daytime high temperatures won’t get above freezing until late February or early March. Of course, we’re already into the second week of meteorological winter so we’re getting used to the snow and cold.

Yesterday’s birthday party was a success. The Texas barbecue dinner went well with my sourdough bread, or vice versa. The Daughter Person enjoyed her presents and the company of those bearing them. Beginning tomorrow, I think I get an early Christmas present, a week’s worth of daily high temperatures above freezing. That’ll make cleaning up after the intermittent snow showers less painful, starting tomorrow for this morning’s snow.

a tree of our own, soon

Photo by J. Harrington

We’ve not yet cut our tree because: other things. Maybe Friday? Decorate it over the weekend? That should work, weather permitting. Then we focus on Christmas / Son’s birthday on the 25th. Meanwhile, we (I) don’t have a clue what most of the family wants for Christmas. As usual, the Better Half will probably bail me out with crucial information over the next couple of days. In any event, so far we’re doing better than the Christmases when my father was fighting the Korean War and, I vaguely remember, my mother would head for the Christmas tree lot on Christmas Eve or the one before and haggle with the seller to get the price down as low as possible.

Christmas Trees

By Robert Frost

(A Christmas Circular Letter)

The city had withdrawn into itself

And left at last the country to the country;

When between whirls of snow not come to lie

And whirls of foliage not yet laid, there drove

A stranger to our yard, who looked the city,

Yet did in country fashion in that there

He sat and waited till he drew us out

A-buttoning coats to ask him who he was.

He proved to be the city come again

To look for something it had left behind

And could not do without and keep its Christmas.

He asked if I would sell my Christmas trees;

My woods—the young fir balsams like a place

Where houses all are churches and have spires.

I hadn’t thought of them as Christmas Trees.

I doubt if I was tempted for a moment

To sell them off their feet to go in cars

And leave the slope behind the house all bare,

Where the sun shines now no warmer than the moon.

I’d hate to have them know it if I was.

Yet more I’d hate to hold my trees except

As others hold theirs or refuse for them,

Beyond the time of profitable growth,

The trial by market everything must come to.

I dallied so much with the thought of selling.

Then whether from mistaken courtesy

And fear of seeming short of speech, or whether

From hope of hearing good of what was mine, I said,

“There aren’t enough to be worth while.”

“I could soon tell how many they would cut,

You let me look them over.”

                                                     “You could look.

But don’t expect I’m going to let you have them.”

Pasture they spring in, some in clumps too close

That lop each other of boughs, but not a few

Quite solitary and having equal boughs

All round and round. The latter he nodded “Yes” to,

Or paused to say beneath some lovelier one,

With a buyer’s moderation, “That would do.”

I thought so too, but wasn’t there to say so.

We climbed the pasture on the south, crossed over,

And came down on the north. He said, “A thousand.”

“A thousand Christmas trees!—at what apiece?”

He felt some need of softening that to me:

“A thousand trees would come to thirty dollars.”

Then I was certain I had never meant

To let him have them. Never show surprise!

But thirty dollars seemed so small beside

The extent of pasture I should strip, three cents

(For that was all they figured out apiece),

Three cents so small beside the dollar friends

I should be writing to within the hour

Would pay in cities for good trees like those,

Regular vestry-trees whole Sunday Schools

Could hang enough on to pick off enough.

A thousand Christmas trees I didn’t know I had!

Worth three cents more to give away than sell,

As may be shown by a simple calculation.

Too bad I couldn’t lay one in a letter.

I can’t help wishing I could send you one,

In wishing you herewith a Merry Christmas.

********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.