Home At Midday

I had occasion to be home during the day today for the first time in weeks. This time of year, I usually leave for work in the dark, and come home in the dark.  My work for the season is finished. This means I have some time I can call my own.  While Steve was finishing up the very last of the landscape work, I went home to try to figure out what I would do for a Christmas tree.  Buck and I celebrate Christmas Eve, so I need to make a move fairly soon.  I was pleased to see my garden was holding its own, and hosting a little holiday display.   I am so happy for my evergreens in the winter. They mean I still have a garden, in late December.   

My home was built 81 years ago.  Vintage, it is.  I like a traditional holiday display that compliments the architecture-this I talked about yesterday.  Southern magnolia does a great job representing that feeling. I hang the garlands, leaf points up; magnolia curls as it dries.  These garlands will bulk up, the more they dry. The color and volume suits this old house. 


I do very little in the way of entertaining.  It is hard enough to find friends that understand and are willing to work around my work schedule.   My good friends come to the back door, or come through the garden gate at the back.  Those friendships are serious enough to welcome them to the back of the house.  But I still want my front door to look dressed properly for company. 

A magnolia wreath is a joy to decorate.  My wreath is decorated with bits and pieces left over from other projects, a stem of curly flame willow, some brown dyed bracket fungus, some pine cones, and a string bow in chocolate. Not so fancy, my materials list.       

My resin cherubs are not such a fancy material, but their shape and expression recalls lots of classical garden ornament I have seen over the years.  The detail and color is amazingly convincing.  Not everyone is a fan of the putti, the cherubs, and the angels, but I fell hard for this pair. 

My winter pots have lights-this is their holiday moment. I will run those lights much longer than I really should, and enjoy every minute of it.  I am just glad to see that the arrangement looks good at midday. 

Rob fixes a pair of pots for me in his own inimitable style that sit on the wall at the end of the driveway.  They are the first thing I see, when I pull into the drive during the winter.  These cream beaded picks are ablaze with light at night, thanks to a few strings of C-7 lights placed underneath them.  During the day, they still look great.  Bleached willow sticks, a few sprigs of flame curly willow, the cream picks and a ruffly skirt of magnolia-this looks as good at midday as it does when I come home after work.  I cannot really explain this, but these Galway stoneware pots beautifully dressed for winter mean all the world to me.  What fun to see them at noon time.

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