Putting up the New Year tree. Oh wait, trees.

A Christmas tree. Of course. Everyone has one. A New Year tree? Not so much. Two NY trees? Say again? What's going on?

Today I woke up happy, planning a project that wraps up an event we decorated a few years ago. I'd painted 12 5'X12' banners to fill the enormous foyer. We cleared out a nursery, hauling 60 firs (or was it 80? 12'-16' tall@$6 each, burlapped) to soften the corners of the banquet hall.

I smiled this morning, waking to thank God for the wonderful women who roped their husbands into helping unload those tall monsters off the truck. We had borrowed endless white lights and gauze from a church, and helpers wound them around clumps of tree bases.

The table decor cost less than $2 each. How? As we looked around the institution's storage closet, the wheels started turning. Candles. Mirror tiles aplenty (cliche, or...) 

W and I went to the river and loaded up 2 buckets of rock. Rinse, scrub. Ready. We were due to dig the moss off our garden path anyway. The morning of the event, I got out a trusty metal spatula and scraped three big baking sheets full of lovely, green mosses. Our shopping list was short: 

• 2 contractor sacks of small round pebbles from Home Depot @4 each
• Several packages of wild-looking mushrooms from Uwagimaya
• 10 bunches of orchids (Trader Joes, a dozen stems@$5)

On each table, volunteers put down a mirror tile ("water"), piled a few rocks at one end, hid the other edges of the tile with pebbles, and surrounded it with moss. We placed mushrooms in the moss, draped a few orchids, and put the candles between. It looked very "Northwest." (Wish I had asked the photographer to take pictures for my file.

I brought two banners home after the event. They lay rolled up for nearly a year until this morning. 

W, who hates heights, crawled up the ladder to mount them in the living room. With his laser level, they're, well, perfectly level, and at the right height (5" below the drapes, which looks like the same height due to viewing perspective.)

Thanks, hon. If I can dream it, he can build it! What fun to share happy memories and art on one day.

What do you think? And what's on your weekend "to-do" list?

Read more:

*He has made everything beautiful in its time. Ecclesiastes 8:11 NIV

*Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously,   and he will give you everything you need. Matthew 6:33 The Message

*Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, "I will never leave you nor forsake you." Hebrews 13:5 NLT

Living green

There's something about living in the woods. They're green, private, and quiet. If you live 100 feet off the street like we do, it's almost like living in the country. We open our windows and breathe the night oxygen before sending the kids off to school. Our window vistas are bark and leaves and pine cones.

It's noisy, but we're not hearing traffic. The birds shout us awake in the early morning. Comes spring, the squirrels scold their young and the woodpeckers glide onto stumps to glut on insects. Summer breezes swish and sing through the treetops. The needles and maple "helicopters" rustle off their stems in an ongoing patter. Winter gales crash against the 100' firs near the creek. We can feel the trees shudder. A mild earthquake shakes our houses when they fall.

Neighbors watch each other's yards to make sure no one trespasses. A few years ago, we heard someone chopping wood. My former neighbor waded into the shrubbery, hollering and cursing some kids who were running around with a hatchet, playing Paul Bunyon. "Get outa there! I'm not sending the ambulance to getcha, and your parents won't be suing me when you trip and hurt yourselves!" Off they ran. And the woodland calmed again.

People sometimes complain about Seattle's strict zoning laws, wishing they could push over some of the timber to build a house here, carve out another lot there. They can't know and love the land the way we do. Living in the forest, we watch the seasons emerge and exhale. We turn off city streets after running an errand to enter green paradise. And we appreciate the foresight of city planners who made the area more beautiful by inviting us to observe rather than "improve" the landscape with our own ideas.