January 10th, 2008 - Putting Christmas in the basement
First, a quick note that I’ve been really sick again. Came down with either another cold or an extension of the holiday one on Sunday. Have already taken off 2.5 days and it’s looking like another half day today.
Yesterday, we took down the Christmas tree. It had always been a bit on the dry side and Eric noticed that when he touched a branch the night before, needles showered down. So I took off the ornaments (all 5 of them) and the lights and he took the tree out to the curb. I also took down the two window figures (snowflake and Santa) and took them and the lights to the basement. Maggie’s insightful comment on the process, “MomMom put Christmas in the basement!”
We had intended to leave the tree up as long as possible; this was earlier than we’d hoped.
I also thought we’d throw the tree in the garden to decompose a bit, but had no desire to deal with it right now. So we put it on the curb–our city picks them up for composting so I’m okay with that. Maybe another year, with Maggie’s help, I’ll make ornaments for the birds and squirrels (like popcorn strings and peanut butter & seeds) and we’ll have fun watching it in the garden.
Oh! A tip for Christmas lights: Instead of coiling them up in a box or trying to put them back on the little plastic things they came on, I wrap them around a large piece of cardboard. Mine is about 20″ square, probably because I had that size handy when I thought this up a couple years ago. Two strands fit perfectly on it. I tape down one end of the strand, then simply wrap the rest of it round and round. The size is a bit large for easy holding but I managed to wrap up the lights as I took them off walking around the tree. It works better with two people, especially when putting up the lights (I held and unwrapped while Eric put up the lights last month). The lights have enough space that we could test them before putting them up to see if all worked.
And, in case you are interested, the mathematics of why lights get knotted in boxes. (The researcher actually put a piece of string in a box and tumbled it around then looked at what knots had formed.)