Christmas in July....

Christmas in July....

The shopping networks are offering Christmas gifts, decorations, linens, wreaths...etc...for sale in July...movie channels are playing Christmas movies and introducing Christmas Ornaments...and it is only July...Christmas planing is getting earlier and earlier every year it seems...

Watching Christmas movies, several revolving around Christmas tree growing or sales lots being back so many memories of past Christmas trees.
When I was a child, our Christmas trees were manzanita trees with their red bark and coin-like leaves.  My grandmother would hang ribbon candy, bubbling lights on the gnarly limbs. It was until I was 9 years old that I saw an evergreen Christmas tree at my other grandparent's home, a natural small redwood with its open spaced limbs holding its large Christmas bulbs of colored lights...so manzanitas at one grandparents home and evergreens at the other.  That was the norm all of my growing up years.

When we got married, we had our first Nevada tree, a free juniper...we obtained a permit for a free tree from the local Forest service office as well as a map of the areas for cutting. We diligently followed the map to east of Carson City, found the area, surveyed the area for a tree. We had a film camera with us ,but forgot it in the truck, so cut it down, took it back to truck, set it up, then Filmed it falling like we were cutting it down ..we did that with each of us "cutting down the tree"... What fun...
Another year we cut down piñon pine trees east of  Elko with  a group of people from our church...or another when we cut down a small juniper near winnuenucca, the truck boiled over and we fed it melted snow to get back to town. In Oregon, we leased our ground to tree farmers, so we got a farmed tree for the first time, both a noble and a fir...

Finally, we ended up getting trees from a local fund raiser, festival of trees,  decorated fake tree in various themes. We got  a baby themed one, a country one, to name a few...when my husband died, it was hard to even think about Christmas...let alone a tree. I finally got small apartment sized ones from my Boy Scout grandsons...just right...

Fun through the years..so many kinds, so many years...so many trees...

Thank YOU for the wonderful times. ......

Genesis 2:9 The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Psalm 104:16 The trees of the Lord are well watered, the cedars of Lebanon that he planted.