Thursday, December 25, 2014

Christmas at The Paine: Nutcracker in the Castle

My mother is 78.  The last year or so has not been heart-warming for her.  My father likes to leave the farm less and less.  My mother, although not an avid traveler, is a big fan of day-trips.  She like to go places and see things.  She talks about tucking away these special memories and taking them out to look at when she is alone.

Realizing this a couple years ago, I made her my frequent travel partner.  We have gone to watch the whistling tundra swans when 17 percent of the entire world's flock descended on the marsh outside Hortonville for a couple days.   We have picked cherries in Door County.  One of her favorite day excursions was to the Garden Door  in Door County, a beautiful little garden managed by the Master Gardener group there and filled with theme gardens, clematis, and flowering shrubs.

And then I fell.

Thursday, December 18, 2014

Looking for the Spirit of Christmas

Decoration on one of the holiday trees at The Paine, in Oshkosh
I confess.

I have not put up a Christmas tree for a number of years, now.  I have several boxes of beautiful real glass ornaments many dating from the early 1950s.  Even those from the 1980s could be considered vintage at this point.  I stopped collecting when so many ornaments available started being made of shiny plastic.  I even have a string of glass beads, probably from the late 1890s.  They stay in their boxes, safe, each year.