Chirky

Last night Roger and I went to Home Depot Nursery to pick up a fresh wreath for our home. I love the scent of pine at Christmastime, but not the scent of PineSol, which is quite offensive to my scent and not so fragrant. Or, rather, maybe a little TOO fragrant. Much like an odor left by the passing of a certain animal.

We wandered through aisles and aisles and aisles of six- and seven-foot trees. We found no wreaths. There was only one miniature tree, which was beat-up and looking frail. We later discovered that the wreaths won't be arriving for another two weeks. Don't even get me started on why they were advertising them in their newspaper flyer last weekend. I may not work in the HomeDepot marketing department, but that makes no sense to me.

We stood around for a while, disappointed. There was an enormous pile of mixed branches that had been sawed off already-purchased trees - Scotch pine, Douglas fir, Fraser fir, Virginia pine, etc. Eyeing the pile, we asked whether we could buy branches. The answer was, "No. But you can have them for free. We're just going to be throwing them away."

We dug around in the mound of branches and filled Roger's trunk with a giant pile of them. I don't know how long they will last - probably only a couple weeks. (Though I'm considering spraying them with water every few days.)

Roger had a vision for what to do with the branches. I was naming off things I could do (but would probably never get around to doing) with them: make a bouquet in a vase to use as our table centerpiece, create my own wreath by somehow tying them together in a circular fashion, and adorning them with bows, etc.

Admittedly, Roger's vision was the better one.