The "kids" have finally gotten used to the Halloween decorations. It only took a week or two. Jack has stopped thinking the big cat outside the front door is a demon. It also appears as though dogs walking the neighborhood have stopped running past the house in a panic. Since Halloween is almost here, they won't have to put up with hanging, flying, scary things much longer. I, however, will be very sad to see Halloween pass. Next stop, Thanksgiving - then Christmas!
We are definitely putting the Christmas tree on the back porch again this year. If you're a true Floridian I guess you refer to that space as a "lanai." It's a porch, people. And this year's tree will be the old fake one. I'm tired of sweeping up needles. Plus, the cats are tempted to "mark" a real tree. And I doubt we would ever be able to get tree-obsessed Dash out of it.
I love the smell of pine, but when you are from a northern climate, where real pine trees live, the ones we get here are a poor comparison. I remember our first Christmas in Florida - thirty years ago. I had my hopes destroyed over a normal (for me) Thanksgiving, during which I had to stick my head in the freezer to breathe cold air. Somehow it just doesn't seem right to have the a/c on during a turkey dinner with all the fixins'. So when Christmas rolled around, I was determined to make it as traditional as I remembered. We went looking for a real tree.
Boy, did they see us coming. Nobody told us the"firs" they sell here are not actual pine trees. They might look like pine trees, but they aren't. We bought one, decorated it, then woke up the next morning to nothing but a tree skeleton, with its "needles" on the floor around it. Oh, and we also noticed the green paint which was used to disguise the fact it wasn't a real pine tree.
I was not going to be outdone by Christmas in Florida. So, the following year, we went in search of a tree to cut ourselves. We were in our new home, with high ceilings, so I wanted a huge tree. Oh, we found one alright. That sucker came right to the ceiling. The problem (well, there were several) the base we had for it was too small. Andy convinced me it would be fine. It was not. After climbing a ladder to get it decorated, we admired our handiwork then started putting boxes away. Our son yelled, "The tree's falling!" so I sent our daughter out to tell her father. His response, "It'll be fine." It wasn't, and fall it did. If one of the kids had been under it, we would still be picking pine needles out of them.
That damn tree fell a few more times before I took matters into my own hands. While the kids were at school and Andy was at work, I removed all the decorations and dragged the thing into the front yard where I performed surgery on it - removing about four feet from the bottom. When I brought it back in, it was considerably shorter and much more manageable. When Andy got home, he just stared at the tree and said, "What did you do? You're crazy." Never again did we cut our own tree, and I think we settled for artificial ones after that.
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| Not me, but this is what the end result of my pruning looked like. |
That was until last year when I succumbed to nostalgia. I wanted to smell pine again, and candles and room spray just weren't cutting it. What a mess. I was never so glad to get rid of a tree in my life. I have sworn off real trees - that is - until I pass them and the smell grabs me again. No! I will not be weak! I will fight this demon for all I'm worth!! But they smell sooo good.....
To be continued...
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