Christmas Tree 2011

This is a very self-indulgent post. My sister asked me for photos of the Christmas tree, but rather than emailing her, I thought I could make a blog post out of her request.

Not a bad looking Douglas fir from Oregon! It measures somewhere between 6 - 7 ft (1.82 - 2.13 m), and it is quite chubby. I have a ton of ornaments, but this year I decided to be moderate, and ended up hanging approximately half of them. There is an entire storage box still in the garage. Most of my favorites are on, though

As a Spaniard, I have very fond memories of the Three Kings (Los Reyes Magos). These figures are made out of paper, and I love their faces, which remind me of the El Greco paintings

You won't find a whole lot of plastic on my tree. There is something special about homemade materials, like these cute felt creatures (although the ladybug has quite the sinister face)

Last year I participated in a crafts exchange at Crafster.org, and my trading partner, a lovely 18-yr old from Nebraska, sent me a trio of Kusudama balls. One was made from an old novel, another from a map, and this one from the pages of a magazine

This knitted stocking and a couple of other similar ones have been with me since college. I am not 100% sure how I got them. I want to say that the landlady from the apartment complex where I lived gave them to me

This ensemble is in honor of my husband's love for jazz music. The face of the drummer makes me laugh!

Of course, I could not possibly NOT have a cork ornament

Some ornaments have traveled a long ways, found by lucky friends in their exotic vacations, like this mistletoe paper cutout from Denmark

And like I said, there isn't a whole lot of plastic on this tree, but this is one of my favorite things: the Lifesavers garland. I bought it at Mac Frugals (now known as Big Lots) while I was in college. Perhaps the idea of trimming the tree with candy appeals to my inner 4-year old. The truth is I always look forward to hanging this garland. I love the fake sugar dusting on it, its bright colors, and how user-friendly it is. I have a love-hate relationship with garlands. They tangle. They slip. They don't want to stay put. So I am grateful for this one, flexible, colorful, tangle-proof, happy, silly.

So that's my tree.

There are many Christmas trees in my memory, but two stand out, and neither was very pretty, in the strict sense of the word. The tree we had while growing up was silver tinsel, and it looked like an uprighted bottle brush. When we moved to Spain, somehow the pole got lost, and my mom had a carpenter create a new one. I don't think the carpenter understood very well how the tree was supposed to look in the end, judging from how he drilled the holes for the branches. I should post a photo of it, for your enjoyment. We have tons of them. Every year we would snap a new photo, and my mom would ask if we were documenting the tree's growth.

The second tree I vividly remember is the one my friend Bert had for a Christmas party at his place. He was an exchange student from the University of North Carolina spending a year in Sevilla. I was a student too, thinking about going to college in the US. Bert bought a tiny artificial tree, no more than 2 ft tall, and at the party he handed everybody colored pencils and construction paper and asked us to create ornaments. There were many levels of expertise among us. Bert's mom said at one point, "I can't draw", which sounded odd to my English-as-a-second-language ears, because she was, in fact, drawing. I distinctly remember the ornament that our friend Marvin created, a little teddy bear, so perfect it looked professional. We also had a big bowl of popcorn, and we strung it into garlands, also a first for me. At the end, that little plastic tree looked beautiful, with its paper ornaments and the popcorn simulating snow, a touch of home for a whole bunch of American kids spending their first Christmas abroad.

Persimmons

We planted a persimmon tree in our backyard the summer of 2004. I remember the date because for a while we were following the tradition of wedding anniversary gifts by year (first anniversary: paper, second anniversary: cotton...) We have since given up, after stumping on bronze, but in 2004, which is the year of Fruits and Flowers, we were still at it.

This persimmon tree is therefore very young, and I marvel at its tremendous load. I can almost hear the upcoming sigh of relief this poor thing is going to make once all that fruit is off

We have had fierce winds these last few days, and the leaves have all fallen out

Northern California is a good area for persimmons (can you tell?). They are everywhere. Mine is the Hachiya variety, and you have to wait till the fruit is soft to eat it. Otherwise, the astringency will knock you over. The trees get to be really tall, up to 25 feet or more, and at a time of the year when the leaves have fallen and there is little color, it is a delight to see them with their flaming orange fruits, hanging like big ornaments.

I have let this little tree grow pretty much untamed, and this is why there are lots of crisscrossed branches. I need to fix this as soon as the fruit is off the tree. Pruning is not my favorite gardening activity. The saying goes, The cobbler's children go barefoot (or in Spanish we would say, En casa del herrero, cuchillo de palo). I have a degree in Plant Science, and this would have granted me a big F!

The birds are plenty happy. I just hope they leave a few persimmons for me

While taking these photos, I ran into this cutie

I am a big fan of the Play With Your Food books, by Joost Elffers. This persimmon could have been featured in the series, maybe as an evil witch, or perhaps a toucan.

Although I have a whole cookbook on persimmons, I think this year we may have to dry some. I am going to do some research.

Final piece of trivia: one of my college lab mates was Japanese. Someone brought persimmons one day, and much to my delight, I discovered that persimmon is pronounced the same in Japanese (Kaki) and in Spanish (caqui).