We're entering into the shortest days of the year. With the holiday season approaching, you may be trying to think of ways to brighten up your home during these gray days and long nights.
I'm nothing close to Martha Stewart in terms of creativity or decorating, but I do find some extra lights and bright colors really cheer me up.
For extra lights, I've taken to using strings of white mini-lights on windowsills and shelves. The new LED (light emitting diode) type are becoming more available and at much lower prices now. I prefer the warm white bulbs over the icy blue-white, but that's just a matter of personal taste. They also come in all sorts of colors.
What I like most of all, of course, is some kind of plant material. For a blast of bright color, nothing beats a poinsettia plant this time of year, and it will last for weeks with minimal care.
If you like the heady scent of certain flowers, just one pot of paperwhite narcissus or stargazer lilies will fill your whole house with aroma. This can be overpowering, and some people are more sensitive to the perfume than others. I find if I put them in another room, the scent is more tolerable for me.
Amaryllis, poinsettia, cyclamen and Christmas cactus are some flowering plants that do not have such a strong aroma.
Evergreen roping is beautiful and not that hard to make. It's more time-consuming than anything, as long as you have a good supply of greens. I used to make about 40 feet of roping each year, until I finally got wise and bought artificial roping. It doesn't look nearly as nice of course, but for the outside porch railing you can barely tell.
I still use fresh greens indoors where I can appreciate the color and texture of the needles and smell their gentle scent.
Balsam fir is the most fragrant, but white cedar and white pine are also nice. Frasier fir is a popular type of Christmas tree. It's beautiful and holds its needles a long time, but it doesn't have that classic aroma of a balsam fir.
If you use a fresh Christmas tree, try to buy one a little taller than you really need. Then you can cut off the bottom foot or two of branches to use for decorations and still have a good-sized tree for your house.
Or, if you have permission from a landowner or own your own woods, you may be surprised by how many interesting things you can gather to use for decorating. The one tree to avoid is hemlock, which looks a lot like balsam but without the scent. It's notorious for dropping its needles early so it's not a good choice for decorations or wreaths.
Some berries last longer than others, and some, such as the highbush cranberry so many of us have in our yards, have an unpleasant odor indoors. You'll just have to experiment a bit.
Poison ivy has persistent white berries this time of year. I know of several people who collected it for decorating before they realized their mistake. It can cause an allergic reaction even without its leaves.
Some of my favorite berries to collect are from red cedars, winterberry and bittersweet.
For greens, I like balsam fir, yews, white cedar and white pine; and then the bare branches of red-stemmed dogwoods, birch branches (do not peel the bark off living trees), pinecones, hemlock cones, moss and all kinds of seed pods from weeds, shrubs and wildflowers. I find as long as it has interesting color or texture, it works for me.
Amy Ivy is executive director of Cornell Cooperative Extension, Clinton County. Office phone numbers: Clinton County, 561-7450, Essex County, 962-4810, Franklin County, 483-7403. Website: www.cce.cornell.edu/ecgardening. Email questions to askMG@cornell.edu.
