living in the woods and making stuff

This year, and many years in the past I have gotten a Christmas tree from the ditch. When I was little, my dad would go out and find us little trees for our bedrooms. I always looked forward to this, carefully decorating the little tree in my little room. Now that I have a house, I still like to find a tree outside somewhere and use it. I really like unusual trees, and have found that they are readily available in ditches. Ditch trees around here are often arborvitae, also known as red cedar, and are usually cut down every few years anyway, so I don’t really feel too bad about using them.

On Christmas Eve, my friends Swati and Eric and I went out to collect some Christmas cheer. We used Eric’s big car (another reason that I need a pickup truck..) to haul the tree after we cut it down. This year Eric had a source for the more traditional pine ditch-tree (not the scraggly arborvitae). We drove to the spot, found a “minimalist” tree, chopped it down, and brought it home. The whole process took less time than it would have to go to Hy-Vee, select a tree, pay for it, and tie it to the top of the car.

My sister Nozomi was visiting for Christmas with her parents. They came over right after we brought the tree inside and put all the lights on. I LOVE having family visit for the holidays!!!

Since I only had 12 ornaments and 1 strand of lights, the slightly sparse tree worked out very well. The ornaments are knitted Christmas balls, that I made last year out of Noro yarn. They are very nicely multicolored and cheerful.