Of Cows and Garlands

The season is upon us at Windmill Creek. Tendrils of the Spirit have been wafting in for days, stimulating the Joy (and hassles) of Giving. The imagination chugs into gear, conjuring wonders and thrills to be gifted to loved ones, and ideas for presents come out regularly like Pop-Tarts. Most of these ideas are wildly impractical, such a day as a fighter pilot in a real jet for my brother. As a fallback, I guess warm socks are always appreciated.

Nancy has the Spirit in a big way, having now decorated her second tree. The first one was in her home in Virginia, now listed for sale (cross your fingers). The second was here at the Farm.

She began her seasonal decorating by placing her world-traveled, elegant silver reindeer sculpture, with it's trailing silver sleigh on the mantel, on a bed of pine boughs from outside. In the sleigh, she placed her German polar bear doll and a tiny Christmas tree which is being bought home from the woods. This arrangement was eerily prognostic, because we got our real tree in the same way. That is, cut in a “forest” and hauled home in our sleigh, aka the pickup.

We got our tree over at Frantz’s, a friendly family business out near Fermanagh Township*. We would have milked the selection process for more fun, but it was 21 degrees out, with an 18mph wind efficiently extracting the heat from our bodies. So we ran into the field, argued choices quickly with shivering bodies and instantly came to agreement when we spotted "the" tree. With gratitude for a very sharp saw, I got that tree down fast.

It's a Canaan fir, which looks much like a blue spruce. The blue spruce sports zillions of hypodermicaly sharp, blood-sticking "needles," which are appropriately named. However, the needles of the Canaan Fir are so soft, uniformly colored and perfectly made that they look and feel like something synthetic. When he saw the tree, my helper Calvin said, “This tree is so nice, it looks fake!”

We lucked out. This is a great little tree, just the right height, with regular branch spacing giving plenty of room for ornaments, with no irritating needles or sticky sap. It's pretty, nicely proportioned and smells nice. There's even a feature for Daisy - she loves to drink the tree water in the stand.

The water in the stand is going down rapidly. Along with Daisy's visits, our tree is gulping pints of water daily, which makes it alive, I guess. But what really makes it alive is the delightful “special edition" decorating created by Nancy.

For many years, she collected farm-themed Christmas tree ornaments, intuitively sensing that she might some day live on a farm. Which, contrary to the rationalist corner of my mind that rejects the idea of intuition, has now come true. This year, in a kind of quiet triumph, she unpacked her collection of ornaments, and for the first time happily decorated the tree in the farmhouse she now lives in.


The tree is festooned with scores of farm animal ornaments, primitive and literal, cute and artistic. These include a glass pig, many versions of cows of which one is a tiny cow-shaped canvas by a famous Native American artist, various chickens of which the polish glass chicken with a real feather for a tail stands out, plus tiny milk bottles and 4-inch bales of made of real hay. The tree even has little chains made of paper rings, just like we used to make when we were kids which I suspect were made by Nan's kids years ago, or even her as a child.

It’s not cute, despite having plastic popcorn and cranberry garlands. It’s comfy and charming. I don’t condemn the plastic popcorn either, not the least because years ago I tried unsuccessfully, for three years running, to string real popcorn. ( It’s much harder than you think. If you know how to do it, please leave a comment).

Tomorrow, a Christmas Card.

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* Fermanagh. I wondered how to say this for years. It's "Fir-Monna."