Trimming the Christmas Tree with Memories

My favorite part of Christmas preparations is decorating the tree which we did the day after Thanksgiving. We have a real tree this year too! A 5 ft. Blue Spruce...what a lovely smell!

Who's says I'm never in pictures? Look! There's the back of my head!

Every year we buy the kids a Christmas decoration to commemorate a memorable event of the past year. This year I found blue rubber Kansas keychains to hang on the tree. I'd say moving to Kansas from Illinois will be a memorable event in their childhood wouldn't you?

And of course there was the year we brought Knothead the dog home which we commemorated with bone ornaments.

Then there was the Christmas we bought each boy a house ornament because we had lived in four, yes four, different houses in a 12 month period. That was a crazy year!

Not all the tree ornaments are for the kids though. The tree also holds tatted snowflakes my mom made.

But my most precious ornaments were made by my great great grandmother, who is almost 97 years old. Every Thanksgiving she would pass out ornaments to all of her grandkids and great grandkids that she'd made that year. I wish I knew just how many she had made for us all over the years.

And then there's this one....the whiskey bottle. This was hanging on DR's Christmas tree when I first met him. By the way, his bachelor Christmas tree was a broken branch off of maple tree, covered in beer cans and stuck in a five gallon bucket in his living room. Good thing I came along to civilize him wasn't it?

Decorating the tree with my kids every year gives me another chance to share our family history with them. The things we've done and the family they may not remember. And it gives me a chance to be thankful for my childhood and our wonderful extended family.

Wood Smoke...a memory.

I wish I could photograph smells. Through the years I've found various smells to be very nostalgic for me. Someone in our town has a wood burning stove and I can smell the distinct wood smoke outside on these chilly fall mornings.

Our family had a wood burning stove when I was a child. I learned early, especially because I was the oldest, the best way to build a fire.

A tight crumpled pile of newspapers are banked by two stout pieces of wood. Twigs are laid in perpendicular layers over the paper. The layer of ash from previous fires held just a hint of smoke already gone. The touch of the quick flaming match....just one match, no more....and the flame is quickly caught by the paper and the fire grows. The twigs are slower to accept the flame but once they take it on they burn stronger and longer.

The smoke is sucked through the open damper and out the chimney but there's enough of its hot acrid warmth to fill my nose.

Wood is added in increasingly bigger pieces, carefully so as not to smother the tiny flames. Until the iron box of a wood stove is full of roaring hot flames! Shut the door! Close the damper....but not too tight. Smoke that flies up the chimney is good. If the damper is too tight, smoke fills the house like a ghost which results in shrieks.....from Dad.

"Who checked the stove last??? The damper is too tight!" Numerous pairs of feet gallop to the basement....open the damper.....let out the smoke.

At times, I recall, my clothes would be saturated with the aroma of wood smoke. The smell was soothing and comforting; a smell that filled my childhood winters.

It's been fifteen years since my winters have been filled with checking a fire day and night. Ages ago since I had to trudge through the January snow to help load a trailer full of wood and haul it to the house only to unload onto the frozen ground. Splitting wood in the barnyard, while being whipped by the winter wind, is no longer a mandatory weekend chore.

But this morning I stepped outside. My breath hung white in the air. I inhaled the neighbor's wood smoke until it filled me up and I was twelve years old again and slowly, patiently building a wood stove fire.

It's been many years since the jobs of filling and maintaining a wood stove were mine. I'd give almost anything, for just one day, to go back and have all those responsibilities again. What I'd give to have the wood smoke wrap around me like a wool winter scarf.

This post was written as part of SITS November Content is King Challenge.

Garden Deja Vu

As I was working in my little garden today hoeing and pulling weeds I had a sudden onset of deja vu. Not the kind of deja vu where I remember doing the same gardening tasks as last year and the year before.

 No, I was hearing the echo of voices generations past.

As I sat in the dirt pulling weeds I heard myself say to the boys, "Did you plant these weeds in my peas?" Wait...I remember my Grandma L asking me the very same question. I was as puzzled as the boys were by such in inquiry.

And once when I had to holler at Yap to stop walking on my carrots the image of my mom yelling at me for the very same offense popped into my vision.

Wow, I never imagined while weeding radishes I would see my dad in my mind's eye eating the spicy red veggies with bread and butter.

And my surprise potatoes, once I missed digging up last year, caused me to remember a wonderful potato dish my cousin taught me.

Green beans!! Ha, I'll never forget all the summers snapping green beans with Mom and Grandma and getting reprimanded for throwing the ends in the wrong bowl.

Wow...the memories a simple garden can bring. I hope my kids will have such wonderful garden memories when they are my age.