It was a total revelation. We didn’t know it was allowed to be this easy. This holiday season our daughter gave us an artificial tree that a friend of hers had abandoned at her house. This third hand tree went together in a snap. Just put the four layers together and plug the pre-wrapped lights into each other. Yeah, there were a few bulbs out and bent limbs. But as we have never been fake tree people, it was weird to have this low-maintenance decoration in our house.
We traditionally left our lights on and tree up until at least Epiphany, the twelfth day of Christmas. That was yesterday. So we both agreed it was time to pull stuff down this afternoon. I started pulling soft ornaments down, but I got distracted, and he finished the whole thing. By the time I got back, there was one layer of tree still standing, and two cats with big eyes and swishy tails loving the mess on the floor. And that was it. In just a few minutes it was down. I can barely credit it. Of course, getting the ornaments put away is annoying and time consuming, but the rest of it seemed criminally easy.
We are trying something new with our giant, ancient plants. I had the ficus tree (that was one of our wedding gifts a million years ago) sitting in the front corner of the living room for four years. It didn’t get enough light, even with the CFL spot light I put on a timer every night. It is looking dead on one side. We pulled it out of the corner and moved it to a better spot in the window. The big old shefflera (which oddly coincidentally was an anniversary gift maybe 15 years ago) is in the corner now, and smaller stuff between them. Not sure how I’ll take to the new arrangement. It does seem like the front room will be more private now, and probably darker.
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