Some people find the holiday season stressful, even depressing. Too many expectations. Too much food. Too many parties. Or too few. For me, it’s the post-holiday season that can be trying. The visitors have left; the Christmas CDs — Johnny Mathis, Bob Dylan, Zooey Deschanel — get shelved for another year; the few remaining by-now-stale cookies get tossed. But the saddest part for me is the undoing of the Christmas tree.
All year long I look forward to decorating the tree. The kids are home, our Jewish neighbors come over, and we open up the many battered boxes of ornaments that we’ve collected over the more than 30 years of our marriage. We still have five of the six clear, pink glass balls that we bought at Conran’s in New York City in 1983, as well as some peculiar hand-made items we crafted in our early, leaner years. Each ornament signifies some aspect of our family’s evolution. One by one they emerge from their crumpled tissue-paper wrappings and find a place on the tree.
After New Year’s, the empty boxes and same, tired shreds of tissue paper come out again. One by one the ornaments are wrapped and stashed away. The strings of lights come off. The naked tree stands in the living room looking forlorn. How could this not make a person want to weep?
I have found a useful way to cope with the anguish of discarded tree syndrome. Instead of hauling the tree to the side of the road, I take it out to the garden, lop off the branches, and spread them over the ground as insulation to keep the frozen ground frozen. Of course, no matter how big a tree we get, its branches aren’t sufficient to cover much of the garden. For more coverage, I sometimes collect spent trees that neighbors have put out on the road. Once I found a small, hidden ornament that a neighbor had mistakenly left on her tree. She was duly grateful when I returned it to her.
The downside of this solution is that it creates a super-cozy environment for critters to burrow in so they can chew at the roots of my plants. But really, any animal that managed to survive the recent arctic spell deserves a bit of comfort.
I know my practice isn’t as ecologically sound as getting a live tree and planting it in the yard after the holidays are over. My hat is off to people who do that every year. If our family had stayed in one place, we could have had a small forest of Christmas trees by now. But I enjoy draping the garden with boughs of balsam in the depth of winter. It helps me maintain a sense of continuity and purpose when Mother Nature is at her least hospitable. I like looking out at the slumbering flower bed under its evergreen blanket. The sight transforms my post-holiday blues into cheerful anticipation of next year’s Christmas tree ritual. Eleven months and counting.
Highlighting the beauty, diversity, and uniqueness of wildlife, Arcadia Wildlife Sanctuary in Easthampton has on view this month an exhibition of wildlife photography and drawings. This is the perfect place to take your stir-crazy kids. Monday through Saturday, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., through Jan. 27. Free admission. Call 584-3009 for more information. 127 Combs Road in Easthampton
Is a woodland garden a collection of plants growing in a natural way or a garden in the shade or a garden of ferns and fairies? On Saturday, Tom Clark, director of Mount Holyoke Botanic Gardens, will give a talk on what makes a garden a woodland garden and his favorite plants for the woodland setting at 1 p.m. at Hadley Garden Center, 285 Russell St. (Route 9) in Hadley. It’s free, but come early because it will fill fast. For more information, call 584-1423.
On Feb. 3, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., Berkshire Botanical Garden in Stockbridge is offering a hands-on workshop on how to grow native perennials from seed. Dottie “Lou” Kratt, owner of Northeast Native Seeds, will discuss the benefits of using native plants in various landscape types, native plant selections best suited for our region and various growing conditions, and site requirements.
Participants will learn how to prepare a site for sowing plants from seed and various low-tech techniques for starting native plants from seed. Each participant will go home with seeds. Kratt has been a gardener at BBG for over nine years. Her Northeast Native Seeds is a small native seed company specializing in local native species. Previously, she was the propagation and seed bank manager for Project Native.
Our region is full of wildlife, but most of the time, it’s difficult to see where the animals are or what they’re doing. In the winter, however, the evidence of animals that hop, stalk or waddle suddenly becomes easier to see and to interpret.
On Feb. 17, from 10 a.m. to noon, Kestrel Land Trust is sponsoring a nature walk in Northampton with John Body, who will reveal some of wildlife’s winter secrets. Participants will learn how to identify the tracks of animals and see how they interact with the winter world. Plus, Body will talk about the lifestyles of the local porcupines (one of the waddlers) in their high-rise “condos.” This event is limited to 20 participants.
It’s free, but donations are welcome. Registration is required. For more information and to register, go to: kestreltrust.org.
Dan Ziomek, local birder and naturalist, will guide two nighttime owl prowls, Jan 26 and Feb 17, from 8 to 10 p.m., meeting at the Hitchcock Center in Amherst.
Dress warmly because the group will be standing around in the dark a lot. Bring your sharp ears, a flashlight and a thermos of something hot to drink.
Members $12/Non-members $16 per night, youth 8 and older welcome with an adult. For more information and to register, go to hitchcockcenter.org.
Mickey Rathbun can be reached at foxglover8@gmail.com.