Christmas 2020

Today is the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. It marks a new beginning in the garden as the days start getting longer. However, the shift is slow. Even after a week, we only gain a little over a minute of light back here in Nacogdoches. Daylight is like interest in a bank, it is going to take a while to really see those seconds accumulate.

While we wait, Karen and I both revel in dressing up our house with more greenery and light during this darker part of the calendar. The pandemic has made it even dimmer this year, and we’ve decided not to travel to Tennessee and Texas to keep ourselves and our families safe. Thus, we’ve decorated more than we have in previous years both inside and out.

Karen and I like foraging on the fencerows near our house for boughs to deck the halls. We threw together a pot by our doorstep using the greenery of Juniperus virginiana and Magnolia grandiflora and the fruit on Ilex vomitoria and Rhus glabra. Behind those cuttings are some bare branches of Ulmus alata. Even going back to when I did Christmas decorations for clients back in college, that species has been one of my favorite plants to find. It different from most of the other branches you see in winter decor, and the winged, gnarly twigs add such texture to an arrangement. This year, I went a step further and added a few dried oranges to the branches as natural ornaments. We have a new dehydrator, and we tried drying oranges for the first time this year. Their windowpane appearance allows one to play with them against the light.

The pot we decorated by our door houses winter greenery during the Christmas season.

These dried oranges make such lovely ornaments on the branches of winged elm.

Inside, Karen also used dried oranges on some candle arrangements she made. She sunk Salvia rosmarinus (I know, it is still hard to type that new name for rosemary) and some late season Amaranthus to create colorful floating candle holders for our table. The end result was her wanting even more plants next year to use for Christmas decorations. I see that as a win-win!

Karen’s natural table arrangements made our dining room brighter.

Not only do we enjoy more light inside from candles but also outside with our holiday lights. Our log cabin is lit with twinkle lights that wrap the house. While we run them each night during the holidays, they occasionally make an appearance throughout the year when we have guests over. These are joined by our Moravian star and Christmas lighted balls.

Electric lights and the full frost moon brighten our garden earlier this month.

While the Christmas oriented decor will go down around Epiphany, I’m not ashamed to say we’ll keep these decorations up on into January. It seems silly that five days after the winter solstice we are supposed to take down all this green and lighted decor that so enriches this dark part of the calendar? Bah humbug!

Christmas Cheer at Williamsburg

This holiday season I’d like to take you back in time to 2010… and the 18th century. Each winter when living in Raleigh, I liked to take a weekend trip to see something Christmasy on the east coast before heading home for the holidays. Ten years ago almost to the day, I planned a Sunday get away to see a rustic, foraged Christmas at Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia. In an age before the crafting of Pinterest and Instagram became more prevalent in our lives, it was so inspiring to see simple, everyday plant parts used in such clever ways to bring a bit of joy and delight to this darker season. And, I return to these photographs each year to see ideas and inspiration I got from my visit. So, enjoy the below photos that I took that dreary day walking the old-timey streets of this historic town.

As you’ll see in these photos, fruits played center stage in many winter arrangements. Here, pomegranates, lemons, and apples are set with dried artichokes and coniferous cones.

The acid green osage orange plays well here with pineapples and apples. Sumac seedheads, wax myrtle fruit, and catalpa pods are up top.

Here the halls are decked with apples and deciduous holly.

Some of the wreaths and designs were a bit less traditional. I loved this banner above the door.

Magnolia leaves were used in many wreaths for their evergreen nature, and I loved how they incorporated clam shells and dried yarrow heads to create a faux magnolia flower in this wreath.

Many decorations were primarily made from dried goods like the chaste tree branches and sunflowers here.

A bundle of wheat makes a striking door accessory.

Here dried plant parts make up the red, white, and blue.

The peels of dried oranges were used to add some zest to this arrangement.

And, here we see slightly dried oranges used as pendulous ornaments with pomegranates and acorns.

Even dried oak leaves were incorporated into some wreaths.

This wreath was my favorite of the day. Not only did I love the use of cotton to simulate smoke, but the color echo of door and wreath and the asymmetry of the cotton with the variegated holly was spot on.

In the south I worry about fruit having holes punctured in them for wreaths. This design solved that problem by wrapping the fruit with colorful fabric.

Occasionally, I saw doors with blue ribbons that were awarded for the most creative designs. To make the designs in the spirit of the place, there were rules like one could only use materials that colonists would have available to them back in the day. So, here you see a fish made out of gingerbread.

This design was another blue ribbon winner. A gingerbread queen bee watched over her hive and honey.

And, I was delighted to see a Star of David with adorning dreidels.

And, I can’t leave showing you photos of horticulture in Williamsburg without a picture of the vegetable garden and the clever techniques displayed for how early gardeners could have extended the harvest! Here you see cut branches, cloches, mulches, and paper frames used to protect early crops. The paper frames were the most interesting to me. From the gardener Wesley Greene, I learned that day they were made from cotton and coated in linseed oil. These designs date back to the 1770’s. So, if colonists can extend the season, so can we.