Praying Mantis, Wasps, Bird Nests and ....

So, what do those items have in common... one day Magpie will find out, but for now, we'll record it here in her 'diary'.

Thanksgiving represents a number of things for us. From hanging out with family and friends to a very light bit of either online or inthestore holiday shopping, but, it also marks the weekend we normally get a tree.

I really adore decorating the Christmas tree. Our last house enabled us to use all our ornaments and continue to grow our collection. We got to the point where we could decorate a gorgeous 12-14 foot tree and not have it look sparse. Wonderful, graceful white lights providing a backdrop to generations, literally of ornaments. Ones from each year of our marriage, many from my childhood and yet more from my mom and Grandparents. Each year as E and I decorate the tree I relive wonderful family memories and thoughts from throughout the years.

So for me, the tree has virtually nothing to do with 'religion', but is rather, much much more about the good memories of near and far. I cherish the tree for this reason and always look forward to it. Even in college I had a tree...

so E and I have cut them down, picked them out already cut, stuffed them in the back of a Nissan Sentra (ok, half in the trunk), hoisted them onto the roof of an SUV, we've borrowed minivans too. We've wrestled with 14 footers, pushing, pulling even tying them to the wall/ceiling at times. Trees so tall you could decorate them from the loft above, it was a hoot. The best year, 2 Christmas's ago, was when we had a tree trimming party, we had about 30 people over one evening, put out a huge spread, had way too much to drink and next thing I know, presto, the tree is decorated. It was a blast.

So this year? We dug through ads finding a place to 'cut your own' but in the end we selected one they had just precut from their other farm (has taller trees), I know, it's hard for friends and family to believe but we opted for a 10 footer that we cut down to 9 feet. Yup, just a pup. As I strung on the lights I got to thinking about the trees over the years, even of last year without a tree, I remembered the wasps, the praying mantis' (we've had it 2 times) and the bird's nests that have come with the tree.

This years treat... drumroll... a spider nest.

Oh, it was awful. I got the hebi jeebies, every few minutes a couple would appear on the ceiling. I got to the point where I couldn't hang the lights it creeped me out. These spiders had 'pinchers', little tiny spiders. E went to the store to buy bug spray, and guess what, no more spiders. HA, take that you nasty nasty 'guests' of our tree....

So I looked online... fearing what I might find... our spiders appear to be "pseudoscorpians", more related to spiders than scorpians, they hold no danger to humans, animals, houses... they are however great for killing mites, flies, ants... they are less than an 1/8th of an inch long.