When it comes to holiday decorating, some folks turn to Mother Nature for help.
At Christmastime, Emma Beaver's Silver Run home is decked out with fruit boards and wreaths -- all made from nature's bounty. She established this tradition after visiting Colonial Williamsburg, in Virginia, on her honeymoon 40 years ago.
"They do fruit boards in Williamsburg," Beaver said. "You drive nails through the back of the board and the fruit is placed on the front. If I have a whole pineapple I will cut it in half and put the cut side down."
She noted that pineapples symbolize hospitality.
She uses apples, oranges, lemons and sometimes pomegranate with magnolia in the background against the board, which is barn siding. "Then I fill it in with boxwood," she said. "Some years I have used cedar to fill in, instead of boxwood."
A large fruit board goes on her front door for the holiday season. She makes smaller ones for the porch posts and boxwood wreaths for her windows.
When Beaver has less time, she'll make swags for the windows instead of wreaths because they are easier to make.
Beaver said her daughters Brandi and Jenny liked to make wreaths with her when they were younger, and they also made them with their 4-H club.
"Doing this is like therapy," Beaver said. "It gives you a great sense of accomplishment. I like it better than trimming the tree, and it sure beats vacuuming."
Glorious green
Lorrie Voytek, of Marriottsville, makes her wreaths with many natural ingredients.
"I use conifers [including] pines, firs, cypress, cedar and several broad-leaf evergreens [such as] holly, magnolia, acuba and boxwood," Voytek wrote in an email. She also makes swags, centerpieces and garland using evergreens.
Voytek adds other natural ingredients to the greenery and she named a few in her email. "Items found locally in the wild are pines, cedar, holly, Paulownia seed pods, trumpet vine and bittersweet vines. Plants that are cultivated and found in yards are Leyland cypress, beauty berries, acuba, boxwood and magnolias. Sometimes I'll use thin branch tips of deciduous trees to add dimension to an arrangement or even dried flowers that I've grown in the garden over the summer."
More often when they were younger, two of Voytek's children accompanied her to collect greens. "Trips through the woods definitely get us in the holiday spirit, as we anticipate the festive activities that go on throughout the holiday season," she said.
Voytek also fashions colonial lemon wreaths, modeled after those found in Williamsburg. In past years, participants in her workshop at Piney Run Park would secure the lemons by putting a finishing nail into the wood and skewering the lemon onto it - "but if left indoors like that, the juice will drip on the floor, leaving a sticky mess," she wrote. "So I devised a way to secure them without poking them. I wrap them in a piece of yellow netting, secure it around the lemons and tie [them] to the wreath base. The netting can be re-used again the following year."
She said she likes that these decorations are sustainable. "The greeneries and berries are composted and the seed pods, seeds and cones are reused year after year, as well as the metal ring wreath base and the wiring. Using natural items gives me the opportunity to be more diverse," she wrote.
"Creating arrangements from natural materials is therapeutic. It's a way to relax and channel my creative energy into something positive," she wrote. "The natural beauty and textures are a warm and welcoming presence."
Rustic reindeer
The Silver Run-Union Mills Lions Club met three Saturdays to create log reindeer to sell as a fundraiser. The reindeer are made from cut logs, with heavy stick legs, craft eyes, plastic-coated cardboard ears and fiberfill tails. Some have lighted red noses.
"We think about reindeer at Christmas," said the club president, Leroy Murdock. "It's about Santa and the kids, and these reindeer are kinda cute and very natural. There's nothing like them."
Murdock said getting together to craft the reindeer was enjoyable and helped club members get in the Christmas spirit. "When people see the reindeer they get excited," Murdock said of his fellow Lions.
All nestled in
Dianne Tate, of Taneytown, decorates her Christmas tree with bird nests and pheasant feathers.
"I started collecting old nests years ago," said Tate. Back then she paid neighborhood kids $1 per nest for abandoned nests. "I always told them, 'Don't interfere with the bird.' After all the work the bird put into it I would never take its nest."
Because birds' nests can have mites, she said, she leaves them outside in a sealed container over winter before bringing them inside. Sometimes, she sprays them with garden center bug spray.
Over the years, Tate added pine cones and brown and gold Christmas balls to her tree but she said she's still most intrigued by nests. "I'm fascinated how they hook together one piece of yarn and grass and sticks to make a home," she said.
Grand gourds
Mary Lewis decorates with gourds. The former Eldersburg resident now lives Catonsville, but volunteers at Piney Run Park, where she was introduced to gourd art.
"The very first [gourd] thing I made was Mr. and Mrs. Claus at a workshop at Piney Run," she said. Those first pieces were lost when a squirrel got into her shed and ate its way inside the gourd to get the seeds.
Now Lewis makes an array of gourd ornaments, including snowmen and Canada geese with red bows.
Lewis said gourd clubs and societies are in every state and even worldwide. "Almost any artwork you can do on a canvas you can do on a gourd because of the surface," she said. "This year I learned how to do gourd luminarias."
"It's fascinating to turn a plain brown thing into something cute to hang on the tree. People are pretty fascinated when they find out what the ornament is made of," Lewis said.
"There are so many things in nature that you can use to make ornaments and decorations," Lewis said. "Even kids can do it. They can use pine cones, seeds and sticks and make all kinds of things. Just look outside and find it."
