Southwest Christmas Tree 2018

Our Southwest Christmas Tree aka Yucca flower stalk has re-emerged this year albeit with only a couple new additions as we steadily replace the ornaments made in China with ornaments handmade by our friends and family members.  This year a fine hummingbird carved by Tom McDevitt of McWidget Studios joins the throng adding song, crackle and movement amidst the yucca flowers.  Also, a family heirloom, yes, handmade, though by whom, unknown, hangs now.  It's a cut glass crystal that once graced the family dining room chandelier.  Other handmade ornaments can be seen in the background:

The Baltic birch scroll saw cut angel mentioned in last year's Southwest Christmas Tree blogpost was fabricated in a limited number for Etsy with two finishes even.

Happiest Holidays to all and best wishes for a great year ahead.

Southwest Christmas Tree Year 2

Our yucca flower stalk has returned for its second year as our Southwest Christmas Tree, but this year we hired the services of a professional decorator.  Here follow some close-ups of several of the handmade ornaments and, of course, Happy Holidays to all my readers, customers, friends and family!!

Santa in the round by J. Lipton

San Xavier del Bac by K. & R. Palmour

Father Christmas by S. Winn

Flat Santa by J. Lipton

Saguaro Monument by K. & R. Palmour

Christmas Tree by M. Lefkowitz

God Bless Our Home by S. Winn

Yucca Flower by Nature

Southwest Christmas Tree

So, is it the tree itself or the decorations that adorn it?

It seemed only appropriate that our transition from dwellers of the Ponderosa pine forest of Northern Arizona to dwellers of the Saguaro forest of the Sonoran Desert include a transition in Christmas tree. Used to be that we would dutifully obtain our US Forest Service permit and cut our own Christmas tree from the foothills of the San Francisco Peaks, teaching us, without learning, that there is a reason for Christmas tree farms on more than one score. We carried that same notion to the Sonoran Desert, thinking we would just go out and cut ourselves a nice, expired century plant flower stalk, which we had seen here and there playing Christmas tree. Given the federal bureaucracy's penchant for picayune, probably a permit for that too, but rather than risk a fine or a rancher's shotgun we found instead a discarded yucca flower stalk behind a shed at Tohono Chul Park. They seemed glad to sell it, and so here's our Southwest Christmas tree. Well lacquered now, the moth larvae scraped out, it should see us through quite a few holiday seasons.

And yes, indeed, greetings of the season to you all!