Location Taken: Savage, Maryland
Time Taken: December 2010
It’s a very rare thing for us to stay home for Christmas.
Christmas to New Years is one of our standard traveling times. We’ve got a lot of relatives to visit, and they’re clustered in Michigan. It’s rather easy for us to go and visit all of them in one big trip, certainly easier than it is for all of them to come visit us. This does mean decorating our house for Christmas is rather low on the priorities, since we won’t be there to enjoy it on the day itself.
Still, every ten years or so, circumstances will shift our plans. The year this was taken, my Mom had a job at the new REI store and had to work right up to Christmas itself. We had to push back our travel time by a few days, though we still were able to visit all the people and places we usually go to.
Still, it meant we were at home for Christmas for the first time in years, and Mom wanted a tree.
It didn’t need to be a big tree, since we’ve got a small house. Besides, we’d be gone for a few weeks after Christmas. We needed a tree that wasn’t going to dry out and drop needles everywhere while we were gone. So a standard tree wouldn’t work, and none of us like artificial trees.
Then we saw the rosemary trees at the local Trader Joe’s. It’s not a pine tree, but the rosemary plant (which has pine-like needles), trimmed in the standard Christmas tree shape. It’s about 2 feet tall and potted. If you wanted to, you could plant it in your garden and have rosemary for seasoning your food. It’s even a spice that’s frequently used in the classic Christmas dinner of turkey and stuffing and potatoes and all those wonderful foods. It was perfect for what we needed.
So we took it home, and set it on the coffee table next to our living room loveseat. We got a strand of pretty lights, wrapped it around the tree, and then put what few ornaments we had on it. And a wrapped candy cane Dad got from the office. I even had a few tiny presents that year, so I made origami boxes out of wrapping paper (the only thing I firmly remember from my Girl Scout days) so we even had some presents under the tree.
The other presents went on the couch. The one in the large box visible in the background was larger than the tree.
Alas, the rosemary tree didn’t do too well not being watered for two weeks, so it didn’t live to Spring for planting. Still, it lasted longer than most Christmas trees do.
