No Plastic...

After a week of recuperating from a fast paced Thanksgiving week, highlighted here, we got down to decorating our place and for the wreath, I needed something round and one thing we have a lot of in the sheds are bike tires.
Can't take the credit for the idea, its Daughter #2's  via pinterest.com, but really from...

directions here

I didn't have to go to town or to the dreaded Suckyoursoul-Mart to get anything. Literally took the front wheel off my allotted, hand me down mountain bike, rinsed the cobwebs and few spiders off of it, its not used much since I am the non mountain biker in a mountain biker family, I just take the photos...

The boughs? Just went out to our forest, though sadly, I was a little more careful this year on which trees I snipped from, since we lost so many of our trees in the fire two autumns ago...

                  

and my husband is a little protective of the remaining trees. But I took my shears and when he wasn't around to be emphatic, very selectively snipped the ends of various pinons branches and made a bicycle tire wreath. Unlike the REI version, I did use a whole bike tire, black rubber included. My husband should be happy about that, cause it would not be me, putting the tube back on the rim, thank you very much and I didn't take a tire off one of the more used and much more expense bikes. Can you imagine, discovering your wife absconded the front wheel off your Salsa bike, to use as a craft project?

So recycled bike tire, mine not his, boughs from our own trees and well wire that was probably about two decades old, from when just moving here, to the Four Corners, I thought I would make fresh wreaths to sell at the Christmas Bazaars,  something others in my family have done rather successfully at Christmas markets on the East side of the Continental Divide.
So made a few dozen wreaths, only to find that there was not a great market for fresh wreaths around here, being informed of this at my craft booth by countless ladies who were quite happy with their plastic wreaths and garland that they just took down from the closet shelf for the season...

In fact a lot of elderly ranch ladies went out of their way to come over to my table and tell me that! 

So check that idea off the list and so for years I had a whole lot of green wire and metal hoops, buying in bulk when the idea first hit.

Plastic foliage is very prevalent over here adorning people's doors, flower pots and cemeteries. 

Not where I grew up in Northern Colorado, where there's fresh wreaths and garland at Christmas time and fresh flowers inside and outside, especially come Memorial Day at the cemeteries.

 something I talk about here, a very long time ago.

Why not here?

Well, it seems to be a regional thing. Plastic affords bright colors and no needed of water or tending, plus it is a whole lot cheaper than the extravagance of fresh at the holidays, or so the locals here seem to think, something that is really starting to fascinate me, regional-ness- why people in a certain region do what they do and a great book to read on the subject is...

The author, Colin Woodard, doesn't get into fresh or plastic flowers and foliage, but he does get into the migration patterns of the different ethnic groups that first settled the US and here, in the Four Corners, where yes Native Americans and Hispanic cultures have a strong hold, but where the most prevalent white Europeans is Scots Irish and well it has been my personal observation, after twenty years of living, teaching and working here, such a heritage leans towards well, not fresh but plastic and practical.