Trees

It's time to start thinking of trees. We're not in the group of folks who put up Christmas lights on Halloween. We're more like the Bishop's Wife (the old David Niven/Cary Grant/Loretta Young movie) who puts up the tree on Christmas eve.  
We don't wait until Christmas eve, but we do wait until December before thinking about decorating. To us, Christmas is a special time of year and to decorate too early makes it less special.
We always do a live tree with roots that we can plant after New Years. We've had remarkable luck with our live trees, though the last two we planted died during the drought this summer. But our yard is full of trees we've planted through the years.

Our first tree was a white pine that we planted after our first Christmas in our new house (1983). It now stands well over forty feet tall. It's a beautiful tree and when we tell people it was  our first Christmas tree inside the house, they look at us as if we're pulling their legs.
I shot a photo this past winter that I called "The Snow Cyprus."  It too was one of our Christmas trees. Our blog-buddy Grandpappy did a watercolor of the photograph and gave it to us when they visited this past summer.
He does beautiful work and Jilda and I were blown away by the gift.
So, this week we'll begin our search for our new tree. We'd like to have another white pine, but we remain flexible because when we find the right tree, we know it.
Once we find the tree, we'll put on a batch of Jilda's world famous hot apple cider brewed with cinnamon red hots, we'll crank up Christmas music on the stereo, and we'll ease our way into the Christmas season.
If any of you are interested, I'll post Jilda's recipe for the cider. If it doesn't make you want to hug Santa's neck, I'm not from Alabama.