Farm Fresh Blog

Getting one book published and wrapping up the first draft of the next book (a mystery novel! It's funny. You'll love these old girls!) left me little time to get anything else done in the months of November and December and so I didn't get the Christmas tree up until yesterday. Didn't start Christmas shopping until yesterday either. Everyone waiting on gifts is hereby notified that those gifts didn't get in the mail until today. 

I almost didn't put up a Christmas tree this year. Seriously. It was already December 21st. That's pretty much on the ledge of Christmas. The Grinch and Max are on the hill starting their downhill race now. But nevertheless, given some time to breathe, I dragged that darned box out of a packed closet and began putting up a Charlie Brown Christmas tree. 

It took forever. Each ornament was a trip through time. Down Memory Lane. I remember the wooden Santa Claus from when I was a school teacher. The beautiful porcelain Arabian stallion was one of my very first Christmas ornaments as an adult. It was splurge at the time. Could we really afford to waste money on a porcelain ornament? I think that was 1984. I still have that ornament. And it still makes me smile. 

One by one they went up on the tree. Gifts from friends, family and loved ones. Gifts that never fail to make me remember that person with a smile. Ornaments honoring old dogs, dead dogs. Loved dogs. A skeleton and evidence tag from my time as a CSI. This one was on the tree that I kept on my desk at work.  

This isn't a beautiful themed tree. It is a hodge podge tree of memories. A tree of my life. And so after the memories were enjoyed and hung on the tree, when the sun set and the Christmas lights glowed, I had no regrets for taking time on the downhill slide into Christmas to finally put up my little Charlie Brown tree.