It's fascinating to discover the varied and creative ways people interpret the traditions, colour and lights of Christmas. One friend doesn't put up a tree, but fills her home with red poinsettias. Another plans to acquire a few huge Christmas ornaments for her fig tree out in the garden.
There are not Christmas lights, which most of us have, but actual gold or silver-coloured globes, stars and typical Christmas shapes, nice and big so that people arriving up her driveway see them.
A Burnaby gardener makes a small winter obelisk for her doorway at Christmas. She begins with a tomato cage that has its legs plunged into a pot. She covers the wires with evergreen branches, holly or other winter berries and sometimes ornaments.
Gardeners who enjoy containers filled with spring bulbflowers can double-up on the space opportunity by inserting decorative branches into the soil for Christmas festivities. The bulbs already planted in the pot must be large types (tulips or daffodils) because these can be planted five or six inches deep-deep enough for Christmas branches to sit securely without damaging any bulbs.
Choices for the branches are immense: evergreens, holly, contorted branches or regular ones spray-painted in whatever colour fits the theme. Ornaments and/or Christmas lights can be added. People with almost no garden can assemble this arrangement in a couple of hours with a trip to their garden centre or florist.
Gardeners can use whatever harvest their garden offers. This could be silver pods of lunaria, berrying branches, cedar, fir or pine stems, contorted hazel, stems of Chinese lanterns or cones spray painted gold or silver or given gold or silver tips.
One of the most giving and entertaining trees for the Christmas garden is a tree offering treats for birds. Any tree that neighbourhood birds are familiar with can be used as a base. Or an evergreen tree can be bought. It's helpful if it has widely spaced branches where birds can perch.
The treats can be homemade or bought. The advantage of buying some things, such as bird seed cakes, especially from stores specializing in bird things, is the guidance available there about which birds like which foods.
But many things can be home-made. These include cranberries or raisins strung into garlands. Unsalted popcorn strings can be easily made if the popcorn is a day old and slightly softened.
Peanuts are also popular with chickadees and jays and apparently more so if they can be halved before being strung. Another treat is peanut butter spread into pine cones.
Some of the features of bird trees were also part of pioneer Christmas trees in North America. Strings of raisins and popcorn were popular and so were home-made cookies, gingerbread figures and candy canes. Hungry pioneer children would snack on these decorations during Christmas celebrations until everything edible vanished.
Other homemade decorations included dolls and balls made of straw, corn husk dolls, decorations of ribbon and yarn and carved wooden toys.
