Christmas Tumbleweed!

I was looking through my old photo albums this afternoon, and stumbled across a picture of the original Christmas Tumbleweed©.

If you’re thinking, Hey, that’s a cool idea, then chances are you are either from the midwest, east or some country other than the US where you don’t regularly see tumbleweeds. Or, you could be a child from a Southwestern state. Melissa and I are midwesterners.

If you’re thinking, Hey, I had one of those when I was a kid, then you are probably from the Southwest, and dragged a tumbleweed into the house and decorated it while your parents protested.

Of course, you might think, What an idiotic thing to do, in which case you are probably a grown-up. Screw you.

Melissa and searched long and hard for this tumbleweed. There were two problems: first, tumbleweeds are really a Spring thing (we didn’t know this), becasue that’s when the wind really picks up and blows them around; second, we needed a small one to fit in the room. We were so proud when we found this one. As we were walking back, we made up a song. (Sorry Mush, hope you’re not embarrased)

O Tumbleweed
(to the tune of O Christmas Tree)

O tumbleweed, O tumbleweed,
How rounded are your banches.
O tumbleweed, O tumbleweed,
We looked so hard to find you.

We searched all day,
We searched all night,
We’ll put on you
Some blinking lights.

O tumbleweed, O tumbleweed,
How rounded are your branches.

The next two years that I was in New Mexico, we were able to get a larger tumbleweed, because we were renting rooms from the very understanding, very easy-going Bob.

Here’s the 1996 Christmas Tumbleweed (from which you can see that Ares started his obsession with lying under Christmas foliage at a very young age):

And the 1997 Christmas Tumbleweed (the only time we had a non-homemade ornament on the ‘weed):

Summer 1998 I moved across the country to Maryland, where I had to settle for a Chrstmastree.