Thick and Shaggy

Thick and Shaggy

Between ... and about... November fourteenth and December fourth I have my annual active contact with Balsam Fur trees and their leafage.  This is the season slot when I employ, by harvest, their leafage for the winterization of our ...Maine (New England) Colonial era homestead.  I’ll get back to that in another post.

The do-course of that annual farm ritual includes a dumpage of a ...farm utility hand cart load... of the thickest Balsam Fur bows I “can get”... out in front of the barn’s doors...

So I may make our wreath

For our front door

Of our

Colonial era (1750’s) Maine (New England) homestead.

This is not a craft project.  This is not an art thought.  This is not a “What do you think?”

No.

When the right moment arrives... with I preferring the mid-afternoon time slot on Thanksgiving Day... because no one will bother me and... being in front of the barn doors that are “back from the road” the holiday drive-by “I SEE YOU” are too far off AND ‘on mission’ preoccupied to

“...Ahhhh...”

NONE THE LESS my exposed position IS factored in so I ...stick to task.  That’s where we first part company.  This is not a ‘start up’ event for I.  No.  I have been doing this for... I say... thirty-five to forty years... ‘here now’.  Yep.  And just this same every year.

I ‘fetch-off’ last years now browned but otherwise ‘whole’ wreath from under its ‘chucked there’ woodshed repose.  (I DO see it all year in this ritual storage.)  I carry the wreath in the cart to the front of the barn.  I get my nippers, scissors and “wreath wire” off of and out of the tool bench.  (I have never ‘bought’ any of these ‘tools’ because I ‘get’ them from ‘estate cleanouts’).  I stand before the open barn doors.  I am dressed in my go in the woods during ‘Deer Season’ full ‘safety orange’ battle gear.  I... START

By snipping off the dead dry old Balsam Fur bows with the scissors cutting the last years wire.  This dead waste falls off into the empty cart.  Next I snip up a bountiful pile of “THAT-OUGHT-tah do it!” fresh ‘thickest possible’ Balsam bows from the dumpage pile.  The ‘doing that’ smells great.

Once piled, I turn back to the old (thirty plus years of same yearly usage) wire wreath ring.  Additionally... I have preserved the old 1970’s cheesy and ratty red wreath bow that, once again, I notice the thick dust on its backside that I always look at and... never clean off.  (no one has ever noticed this dust safe)

No one knows that ...treasure... is there... ever... either.

Going hard tack (sailor’s term) around the wreath ring with fist full and hard handed gripped grabs of bows that are cinched wrapped by the wire from the wreath wire roll following these grabs right behind... I bind these bow grabs to the wire ring.  Again:  This is a vigorous and swift action... enhanced by being out in front of a Maine (old) barn door and having NO ONE else THERE.

Left alone at this creation procedure I quickly create a heavy (15 pounds) full

            THICK and SHAGGY

Christmas / Holidays wreath for our

Old Colonial era homestead’s front door.

I ‘balance’ the wreath by ‘trimming’ it  (“giving it a haircut”); very quickly hanging it “UP” on an old nail on the small barn door and “going at that”... and tying the old dust safe... safe harbor... bow on with its ‘I’ve done that for forty years’ twisted wire and

Stand back and snip a bit more and

On down to the house’s (“I HEARD IT GOING UP” – The Wife)

Front door

To be hung up’

On that..

Front door

“NOW”.

That is ‘making’ a

Real old Colonial Maine farm Balsam Fur wreath

Takes about an hour from bow pile at the barn door to front door

Of our home

Hung.