Sentimental Fools and Cloves

You can call us sentimental fools if you wish, but we find it hard not to hang on to the holidays, once they are up and hard to take down. But here we are, at Easter time, puttering with a ham we shall bake later, finally moved to take down the Norwegian hanging straw Juletre!

Into the box it goes! Four months of holding hands and doing a slow, circular shuffle around where it would land, if it fell, humming the words we cannot remember to the Norwegian National Anthem (I think it is), is enough! It is time to move on.

It is time for the Easter lily, which is already turning brown at the edges of its early blossoms. We do not hang the lily: neither do we gild it. We use it as a symbol: a hope for melting snow, for an early thaw, and for at least a sliver of summer.

Hope springs eternal, here in the hardy northland! We are believers, and I believe it is time to look for the cloves for the ham.

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