Thirty two more sleeps till Christmas Eve! The scents of Christmas are all around! We have a rough and ragged plant on the cupboard by our kitchen sink. The poor thing is not the prettiest girl at the dance, but it smells divine! This plant is the little rosemary that we overwintered last year, coaxed along over the summer, and now have brought in again. Despite its tattered look, it is a joy to have the rosemary leaves handy while we’re cooking, to use for pork chops or baked ham. Or how about rosemary walnuts, of which I can nibble copious amounts. They’re a wonderful snack and great to serve with cheeses.
The fragrance of this plant is part of the spectrum of holiday fragrances that have so many memories, and here’s another. This time of year was when Mom and I sometimes made pomander oranges for Christmas. Have you ever made them? They are very easy to do, have a wonderful fragrance, and bring a touch of natural beauty to your holiday decorations. I remember how we’d make a pot of tea, sit down in her cozy warm kitchen, and make the pomanders while we talked about everything under the sun. No matter how cold it was outside, Sweet Pea’s kitchen was always toasty and filled with love. Such happy memories. Why don’t you try these pomanders and make a new holiday tradition!
So let’s make a cup of tea, and we can go over the how-to of this project together. You’ll need several oranges (we used navel oranges rather than mandarins, the thicker peels seem to work better), whole cloves, and a small nail to poke holes in the orange.
Then the fun begins. This is a very relaxing craft because it’s so easy. Just decide how you want to place your cloves in the orange, whether in straight lines from the stem end to the bottom, or in circles spiralling around the orange, or in fancy swirls. It doesn’t matter. Just use the nail to prick the skin of the orange, then insert the stem of the whole clove right up to the bud. Make another hole beside the first, insert another clove. Don’t worry about having cloves right up against each other, because once you are done, the orange will begin to dry out and shrink, so the cloves will end up closer together anyway. Continue like this until you have completed your design.
After you are done, you can display your pomander in a nice flat bowl, and the aroma will be heavenly every time you are nearby. If you want to use them for gifts, you can wrap a ribbon around them and make a hanger, and they will be pretty hanging on a doorknob, or aromatic in a closet. Once the oranges dry they will keep for a long time.
On one of my tours just before it snowed, I gather up a bagful of pine cones, and I think that dabbing these with glue and rolling them in gold or silver glitter, then placing a few in the bowl with the pomanders would make a beautiful “nature” centrepiece. You could even snip a few juniper or cedar tips and add them to the mix. (Back in the fall, a dear friend of ours gave me a bagful of fresh cedar clippings, and they were a delight to use for Thanksgiving decorating: not only fragrant but beautiful, too).
If you’re feeling adventurous, you could also do this project using lemons, limes, or kumquats. Wouldn’t those colors be stunning together in a bowl?
The Yorkton and District Horticultural Society will soon be planning next year’s program; can’t wait! Visit us at www.yorktonhort.ca, and have a great week!
