(If you’ve been following this over time, just scroll to the end to find the latest episode. If I’d planned this better, I would have done it in reverse chronological order, but I’m not going to change it now!)
The three spruce trees at the back of our garden were planted in late 2003 or Spring 2004. The first photo I can find of them with lights is in 2007, and back in those days, we could just walk around the tree and place the light strings by hand.
As the years went by, it got to the point that we couldn’t walk around them any more and we would pass the bundle of wire from person to person, each doing one side of the tree.
At some point, we went from three trees being decorated to two, and then we needed more strings of lights to cover the tree. The new lights were brighter, and I never did manage to get a good photo because the brighter lights got overexposed and the older dimmer lights were barely there.
I also stopped trying to string lights on the back of the trees because I couldn’t get around there with a pole and we didn’t have enough lights. Besides, the back yard display is for us, and we can only see one side, right?
For the last few years, the extensible poles that I used for washing the upper storey windows haven’t reached the top of the trees, and I’ve had to resort to standing on a ladder to deploy the light strings. I also deployed some colourful language to assist in securing the end of the string at the top of the tree. If the ladder is too close to the tree, I can’t see what I’m doing at the top, and as the ladder is set further away, the pole with about 10 lbs of copper wire hanging off the end wants to drag me off the ladder.
This year the taller tree on the left was too much of a challenge, so we decorated just the smaller tree, which I can still manage, and also used just the older lights, so they are all the same.
I put the newer lights on the Mountain Ash beside the pergola, and yes, we probably need more strings to do it justice.
And it appears I’ve just moved the photographic problem of balancing old and new brightness from one side of the garden to the other. Luckily, our eyes are much better at resolving a picture with different lighting levels than an camera is, so it all looks fine. Until you try to take a picture.
Update from 2020:
And for 2021:
For Xmas 22
In 2024 I stopped taking the long string in the front right up to the top of the “V” and just draped them artistically (!) over the boxwood. The back looks pretty much the same as last year, except the lights along the back fences saw one string moved from the left to the right to beef up the display on the lilac bushes.
In 2025, the front didn’t change much (although I have improved the platform I use on the garage roof). The back is more freeform, so any changes are just because a different whim led me to string it this way or that way. We haven’t had a heavy snow yet (thank you, weather gods) to make it Christmas like – maybe I’ll take another set later.
