The Espy Plot, Oysterville Cemetery, Memorial Day 2008

Yesterday Nyel accomplished a chore that’s been on our ‘list’ for some time.  He did a little tree trimming up at the cemetery.  For the last several years, we’ve been concerned about a low-hanging cedar branch that has shaded (and, recently, has been resting on) my parents’ gravestone up at the cemetery.  It has come under that all-purpose heading of Deferred Maintenance and, like cleaning off the moss on the stones themselves, it has been relegated to the bottom of the list for a long, long time.

It certainly wasn’t guilty thoughts of the needs of the Espy plot at the cemetery that prompted yesterday’s wintery activity.  It was a Christmas Quest – like where will we get the greenery for our traditional door swags?  In past years, we’ve had trees on our place that needed a bit of trimming or, in the more distant past, we had acres of our own woods to choose from.  But this year, we needed to search for a source and… voilà!  We realized that we could ‘kill two birds with one stone’ (or, if your sensibilities are offended: ‘fill two needs with one deed’).

Oysterville Church, Christmas 2008

My father would have been pleased, for sure.  After all, he was the one who began the Christmas swag tradition at our house – and at the church, for that matter.  He enlisted Nyel’s assistance in his later years and, except in years that others have volunteered to wreathe the church, one of Nyel’s seasonal chores has been to build five swags on our front porch — three for our house, two for the ciurch.

Yesterday he got about halfway finished before cold and time forced him indoors and on to other errands.  Maybe he will get them done and up today.  For now, they are ‘a work in progress’ laid out on our south porch.

Our House, Christmas 2008

I don’t think dad was all that much older than Nyel when Nyel’s ‘apprenticeship’ began.  Like many of our ‘who next’ and ‘what next’ questions, I wonder what the future will bring, swag-wise. Interesting to speculate about but, so far, no productive answers.