"Down With the Rosemary and So..."

Down with the baies and mistletoe,
Down with the holly, ivie all
Wherewith ye deck the Christmas Hall."

. . . . . Robert Herrick

I am slowly divesting the house of its Christmas finery.

It's taking a while because (a) it was put up during successive weeks of Advent, so it can't be taken down in mere hours and (b) I'm attempting to put it up in an orderly manner rather than just tossing it into the clear storage boxes as previously done. So the porch and the foyer now have their winter decorations and the dining room, kitchen, and what small things were in the various bedroom and the wreaths on the doors are cleared away. I have various winter decorations (gathered from Christmas clearance, since apparently in the decorating world winter only happens at Christmas [snark]) dotted about the main floor: a basket of greens, snowmen, etc. All the larger trees (the big tree in the living room, the small tree with the miniature ornaments, and the feather tree) are still up, plus the little adornments in the library and the ornament jars and snowglobes in the living room, and the village. I can probably take down the two small trees tonight and the den decorations, but will need to empty one of the big Xerox paper boxes for the village.

The big tree will need to wait until Friday, when I'm off. There simply isn't enough time after work. In the meantime, the timer continues to turn it on and off at night, so it's a glowing, welcome companion to dinnertime and post-prandial reading, pet encounters, and the odd television program or two.

Once the decorations are down I hope to start a couple of new projects: finishing the nook in the yard before it gets warm (that's like four weeks from now, if not sooner! <wry g>) and painting the "wish" stake for the yard in a fall motif. We'll need to get chairs for the nook; I'm simply going to get the PVC (or whatever it is) Adirondak chairs like we have on the porch, except in a different color. There's no use buying expensive wooden lawn furniture in Georgia; the strong sun will sap all the good out of it in two years and it will end up looking wizened and grey (like the rockers on our front porch) and need replacing.