Future snakes

The traditional time to take down a Christmas tree, so the experts say, is Twelfth Night, the 5th of January. As I begin this post, it's early on New Year's Day, and I can promise the Farrell-Churchills will not be observing that particular tradition. For one thing, ours is a Yule tree, an even older tradition, so what's Twelfth Night to us?

Besides, there are other traditions to be upheld. My dad, never especially punctual about anything—he was known to friends and family as "the late Mr. Churchill" well before he was the late Mr. Churchill—used to joke about trying to get the tree down by Groundhog Day, and we've turned that into trying to keep the tree up until Groundhog Day. We've finally invested in LED lights, but in the incandescent years I sometimes worried that we might not make it to the 2nd without the drying Fraser fir becoming kindling for the fire that would finally leave us homeless. Obviously, we've been lucky.

Of course, by the time our trees do come down—we usually have two, one in the "formal" front room upstairs, and the other in the basement sitting room where we spend more of our time—we've missed the tree-recycling opportunities provided by the local council. No worries; we have a space at the back of our lot, down by the alley, where old Yule trees are the foundation of a pretty respectable brush pile. As a rabbit-hawker—and I'm happy to report that Stekoa has been catching them with clockwork regularity of late, December being kind to us as usual—I've always been glad to provide a modicum of shelter for the neighbourhood bunnies.

But just now, with nearly a foot of snow on the ground, I'm thinking of snakes. 

Our little patch of ground in the city has always been home to eastern garter snakes; we occasionally see them sunning themselves in the prairie garden out front, but they are most reliably found anywhere the leaf litter from our backyard oak and sumacs has piled up: along the fences, next to the garage, and along the foundation of the house. (Also in the compost bin, where they seem to make a good living on insects attracted to kitchen waste.) We're always happy to see them, unless Anya (an inveterate snake killer) has found them first; I suppose our little serpent population is a bit safer now that she's gone, but I still miss my puppy girl...

Last spring, on one of the first warm, sunny days, Jessa was clearing dried Echinacea and Rudbeckia and Monarda to make way for new growth, and when she took her cuttings back to the alley to throw them on the brushpile, there was Thamnophis: a dozen or so glittering little garters, recently emerged from hibernation, draped over the branches of our former Yule trees like so many ornaments, enjoying the same sunshine that had induced my bride into clearing the garden.

I didn't myself see the tree of snakes—I was likely off fishing, or let's say at work, for I do work occasionally—but Jessa's description was sufficiently vivid that I can almost remember seeing them. And I can see them now, a few months into the future, on one of the first warm, sunny days of spring, when the lovely green tree now before me has gone dry and brown, but finds itself once again decorated and beautiful.