Shred a spruce branch

I'm not much into holiday traditions. My wife's Chinese and even less in touch with the traditional ways of her culture of origin. So we don't bother much about holidays. This time of year, there's the electric star-shaped lamp in the kitchen window, a box of gingerbread cookies in the cupboard, a few gift-wrapped things for the kids in the closet, and that's about it.

But there's one seasonal thing I've been missing. The smell of the tree. I don't miss the actual tree, but I like its fragrance. So I had an idea. I went out into the woods nearby and cut a spruce branch, took it home, snipped it to bits with pliers, and stuck the resulting prickly salad in two vases. One for the kitchen and one for the living room. Shredded spruce branch packs a lot of aromatic punch. Mmm-hmmm...

Now all I need to get the perfect olfactory environment for the season is a couple of hyacinths.

[More blog entries about Christmas, Sweden.]