Celebrating Advent in the Tropics

[caption id="attachment_1930" align="alignnone" width="640" caption="Palm leaf Advent Wreath"][/caption]

Verse for Lighting the Advent Wreath

The first light of Advent is the light of stones.
Stones that live in crystals, seashells, and bones.

The second light of Advent is the light of plants.
Roots, stem, leaf, flower and fruit by whom we live and grow.

The third light of Advent is the light of beasts.
Animals of farm, field, forest, air and sea.
All await the birth in greatest and in least.

The fourth light of Advent is the light of humankind.
The light of love, the light of thought, to give and to understand.

[caption id="attachment_1929" align="alignnone" width="640" caption="Candle Dipping"][/caption]

The children helped grate the wax to be melted for a relaxing afternoon candle dipping.  A few were needed; to decorate our advent wreath, for celebrating the spiral and for my little Sania's birthday tomorrow.

[caption id="attachment_1931" align="alignnone" width="640" caption="Beeswax candles the children made"][/caption]

The children had fun dipping the candles, allowing the wax to dry and present themselves in their own special shape.

[caption id="attachment_1937" align="alignnone" width="640" caption="Clementines to hold the candles"][/caption]

They meander through the citrus trees and select their perfect clementine to hold their sweet smelling beeswax candles.

[caption id="attachment_1934" align="alignnone" width="640" caption="Palm leaf Advent Spiral"][/caption]

The children love to help trim the landscape in the gardens and cut away the lower branches of the palm leaves to allow light to flow through during the cooler seasons. The children excitedly formed our advent spiral with the palm leaves they have cut away.

As we sing our advent songs and the verse above the children slowly pass through the spiral to light their candles from the candle in the center that is placed on a log.

[caption id="attachment_1933" align="alignnone" width="640" caption="Sasha placing his candle on a leaf "][/caption]

They walk back through the spiral and place their lighted candle on a special leaf on the side of the spiral.

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This is our beautiful Candlelight tree that I planted as a little seedling a couple of years ago.

[caption id="attachment_1928" align="aligncenter" width="533" caption="Our potted Christmas Tree"][/caption]

Seldom do you see pine trees growing on our side of the island.  We have three in our garden that we have planted ourselves,  they are not the common pines used for Christmas trees.  This is a tree we have used for many seasons now.

[caption id="attachment_1932" align="alignnone" width="640" caption="The Christmas tree "][/caption]

The children enjoy making ornaments throughout the season to embellish our pretty tree.

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Their advent calendar bags that hold little treasures every morning for the advent countdown.

Do visit follow this link to Magic Onion's blog to share Kelly from Free Flowing Ways, magical advent experience in the woods!

[caption id="attachment_1939" align="alignnone" width="640" caption="Sasha's Christmas tree painting"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_1940" align="alignnone" width="640" caption="Playing in the horse pasture"][/caption]

Late afternoon walk in the horse pasture and play field!

I thought I would add this article written by the Nature Conservancy Blog because many people are unaware of the dangers of plastic in our home and the toxins emitted from the plastics and being accumulated and burnt in our landfills.  The depletion of our land from logging and cutting down trees is destructive, not to mention all the wild habitat and animals that are destroyed in the process and the terrible emissions from large trucks to transport these trees all over the State.

Keeping our own special christmas tree year after year, either in our garden or in a pot is a wonderful way to preserve our land and forests.

Christmas Tree Debate: Real or Fake?

My home sits in the Berkshire Hills, with a distant view of the second highest peak in Massachusetts– Mt. Everett. Surrounding my house is a swath of farmland, which includes a Christmas tree farm owned by the Chapin family, who arrived in my town in about 1830.

In its heyday in the 1990s, the Chapin Christmas Tree Farm was packed with people from the day after Thanksgiving until Christmas eve. Families would arrive on our small dirt road from a 2-hour radius (south to Manhattan, west to Albany, east to Hartford). Children and parents would pile out of cars to prowl the several acres of trees in search of The One that was just right. Eventually each family would find the tree that best fit their image of Christmas (and their living room), and my neighbor or his grandson would pull out a saw and the transaction was completed.

This scene—one of family togetherness, people asserting their own unique taste, and support of local agriculture– is today rarer than it should be. More than twice as many families in the United States use fake trees as real ones.Beyond the losses to family interactions and local economies, this situation is bad for our climate.

Fake trees are usually made from a kind of plastic called polyvinyl chloride (PVC) which is derived from petroleum. Electricity is used to melt the plastic, and approximately 85% of the fake trees sold in the US are shipped here from China. Most of China’s electricity comes from burning coal—the dirtiest source of electricity. Once the fake trees are made, they still have to be shipped across the ocean—usually in a diesel-fuel powered ship. More emissions still. (Fake trees also sometimes release lead when they get old, which isn’t a climate impact, but still is not a great thing to have happening in your living room.)

Real trees of course do sometimes require shipping. Today on US Route 7, I saw a truck with Quebec license plates headed south—loaded with about 250 bound-up real trees.

But real trees also grow in the ground for several years before they are cut, absorbing carbon out of the atmosphere every year. The vast majority of real trees today come from Christmas tree farms—about 12,000 of which exist in the United States. On these farms each tree cut is typically replaced by a new tree or two or three, which continue removing carbon from the air.

And once Christmas is over you can use your real tree in many ways—Replant it if you have the roots. The boughs can be cut and used as a protective covering over delicate shrubs, the tree can be chipped and composted, and there’s the ever popular New Year’s Eve bonfire (if you live in an appropriate place for bonfires). Real trees can also be used to help trap sand on beaches, preventing erosion, or sunk in ponds to provide habitat for fish and other wildlife.