Words and Pictures that take me home

Photo: https://grannymarigold.blogspot.com/

Words and pictures can set our memories loose. This one makes me think of home and Christmas holidays. The word home is a prompt that provokes pages and pages of writing for me.

This picture takes me back to Santa's Forest, our Christmas Tree farm. Barry and I joined Gay and Stu in planting and growing trees on the family farm in southwest Georgia. It was Gay's idea and she convinced us to go into the business although Barry had misgivings from the start.

None of us knew how much hard work went into growing the trees from little plantings we purchased in February, heeled in, until we could plant them in the rows we had plowed with our little Kabota tractor. We began with a five-acre farm and planted one acre, a new crop, each year because it took five years for the trees to be large enough and shaped properly to sell. Gay was amazing. She learned how to prune those trees and each summer, she hired a crew of teenage boys and taught them how to properly trim the limbs to make the pines look like Christmas trees. 

Gay and I heeling in the young plants that would become Christmas Trees in five years.

We soon found that I was not much help with all that outdoor work. 

My allergies were triggered by the spray used to kill weeds and keep insects from harming the trees. But my little sister was determined to make a go of that farm and she did. She might go home looking like she had been dipped in a vat of green dye, but that was because she had been on the tractor all day greening the trees so they would look pretty to the Christmas shoppers.

The fun part of tree farming for me was selling the trees to the people who came to cut their own.

Families chose the one tree that would best fit into their home. We played Christmas music that helped keep us all in the holiday spirit. It could be heard all over the farm. We rented a small trailer for the season. It was used as our sales office and the place where we could retreat when the weather was cold and nasty. 

Many friends and their families made tree shopping at Santa's Forest a family tradition. Although we had fun and enjoyed working together, it became a full-time job for Gay. I am happy we gave this enterprise a go. I learned so much and I think we all learned many things that have served us well over the years.

The tree farm became too much for Gay to handle alone.

It was sold to a family member who soon learned that tree farming was not as easy as it seemed. He let the trees grow large and thick and turned the farm into a once-a-year event that has been fruitful for him. Santa's Forest is now The Haunted Forest and people from all around the area make an annual October trip to the haunted forest where they get their Halloween excitement.  Family members and their friends work together to create scary thrills for those who are brave enough to enter. 

Christmas holds so many memories for me and they are all centered on family and home. 

Do you have happy Christmas memories? Where do they take you?

Books make great Christmas gifts

Paws, Claws, Hooves, Feathers, and Fins

Now Might as Well be Then

Feannag by Carroll S. Taylor

Blanche by Brenda Kay Ledford

Liri: Poems of a Woodland Woman by Mary Ricketson 

Making My Way in Ethics, Worship, and Wood: An Expository Memoir by William Everett

Holiday memories get to me this time of year

Gay, June and Glenda in 2011 

Holidays bring up the nostalgia of long ago celebrations with family, many long gone now. 

I grew up in southwest Georgia in a simpler time when we found our Christmas tree in the woods on the farm where we lived. Max, the only one of my four brothers now living, took on the responsibility of taking his little sisters to find the right tree. Looking back, I am sure he spent many hours inspecting the pines and cedars during the fall months so he could take us right to the one that would serve us best.

From pictures taken back when Gay and I were little children, it is evident that we did not have many trees shaped like the typical ones we see today. We might have a cedar tree one year and a pine tree the next. (They would be called Charlie Brown trees today) 

I remember the cedar trees were flimsy with soft branches that would not hold up ornaments of any weight. The pine trees smelled good but were sticky with resin that got on our hands and clothes. The long needles drooped sadly. They, too, were difficult to decorate. 

We did not have lovely ornaments bought in stores when we were really small. We made our colored chains or used garland saved from years past. We hung faded blue and red balls bought when my brothers were kids. However, we always had silver icicles dressing up the humble tree. 

After 1946, we had electric lights on our tree each year. That was what I loved best, the twinkle lights and bubble lights. Max made us a star from cardboard, paint and glitter. I couldn’t have been happier with a Christmas tree when I was under the age of six, than I was with the ones we brought home from the woods. Nobody I knew bought a Christmas tree back then unless you purchased an artificial tree, and no one in our family would dare do such a thing. 

As long as my mother lived, we always had a Christmas tree at her house and until she was unable because of declining health, to handle the big gathering, all of our family came there on Christmas Day, exchanged presents and ate a delicious meal. This time of year the memory of those days wells up in me like water from a spring. I can close my eyes and feel the joy of family, smell the scents of Mother's fruit cake cooking, the dressing we always had for Christmas dinner, the fresh smell of the tree, and hear the voices of my mother, sisters and other dear family members, talking, laughing, sharing their love for each other. 

Today’s Christmas trees wear the most beautiful ornaments and wrappings. I can hardly believe the time and money it takes to decorate even one. 

A few years ago, I visited a cousin, Steve, and his wife, Maria, in Dawson, Georgia. They have renovated one of the old houses still standing in that town and it is beautiful all the time, but at Christmas it looks like Santa's elves have sneaked in and turned the place into a wonderland.

Below see some pictures of their house at Christmas. 

The Christmas tree in the living room of my cousin's house had not one bare branch on it, I'm sure. 

This tree was in a bedroom with ornaments that matched the decor of the room. Every room of this huge house had been meticulously decorated for Christmas. My eyes could not take it all in.

One of the many fireplaces in the vintage house where Steve and Maria live in Dawson, GA. 

The tree below was in the home of Gay and Stu Moring, my sister and brother-in-law. This was before the presents were added. When I see this perfectly shaped tree I smile. So different from the trees we had as children.

We learned how to make a perfectly shaped tree when we grew up and owned a Christmas tree farm. Gay still prunes away anything on the tree they purchase that doesn't look like a Christmas tree. 

I don't dare put up any kind of Christmas tree this year. 
Lexie, my puppy/monkey gets up on tables, into flower pots, trash cans, closets and I can imagine what she would do to a Christmas tree. But she does have a stocking hanging on the mantel that she has not yet discovered,  therefore it is safe -- for now.