Xmas doings
Dec. 10th, 2005 16:13![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
torquillThis was the first year we couldn't get a Monterey Pine for our Xmas tree.
We always cut our own (I was shocked to discover that it actually costs less to do that). The tree guys told us that they had about four Monterey Pines on the lot and they were all hideous. And so dies the tradition of having a bright green, long-needled pine with fragrant pitch every winter.
We managed to find a decent spruce, though, one which hadn't been pruned to within an inch of its life, and was therefore not the dense mass of most of the ones on the lot. It's quite open without being sparse, and doesn't have the yellowish hue that says "sickly" to me. (I vetoed one because it looked ill.) It's quite prickly, but it doesn't bother me much; I'm used to getting torn to hell by roses and summer squash.
It's in the living room for the first year since 1988. The '89 earthquake made us somewhat unsure of the living-room chimney, and my dad wanted Xmas in the newly refinished family room, so that was that. Never mind that the candy table was still in the dining room, separated from the living room by an arch, so we had the tree down the hallway from the candy and the kitchen. I've missed having the tree in the living room, and after the piano left I said so. Much to my surprise, my dad agreed. So we'll be checking over the chimney thoroughly, and presumably (I don't expect any damage that wouldn't have unmistakably shown up since the earthquake) we'll finally have a fire in that fireplace again.
We're cleaning up the living room because of all this, of course. We have to figure out places to put everything, from the two folding bookshelves to the short-boxes of comics to the extra chairs that need to be given away. It looks like it'll come together, and might cascade into cleaning some other rooms too.
We always cut our own (I was shocked to discover that it actually costs less to do that). The tree guys told us that they had about four Monterey Pines on the lot and they were all hideous. And so dies the tradition of having a bright green, long-needled pine with fragrant pitch every winter.
We managed to find a decent spruce, though, one which hadn't been pruned to within an inch of its life, and was therefore not the dense mass of most of the ones on the lot. It's quite open without being sparse, and doesn't have the yellowish hue that says "sickly" to me. (I vetoed one because it looked ill.) It's quite prickly, but it doesn't bother me much; I'm used to getting torn to hell by roses and summer squash.
It's in the living room for the first year since 1988. The '89 earthquake made us somewhat unsure of the living-room chimney, and my dad wanted Xmas in the newly refinished family room, so that was that. Never mind that the candy table was still in the dining room, separated from the living room by an arch, so we had the tree down the hallway from the candy and the kitchen. I've missed having the tree in the living room, and after the piano left I said so. Much to my surprise, my dad agreed. So we'll be checking over the chimney thoroughly, and presumably (I don't expect any damage that wouldn't have unmistakably shown up since the earthquake) we'll finally have a fire in that fireplace again.
We're cleaning up the living room because of all this, of course. We have to figure out places to put everything, from the two folding bookshelves to the short-boxes of comics to the extra chairs that need to be given away. It looks like it'll come together, and might cascade into cleaning some other rooms too.
