Checking in with our greens on Epiphany

We hope you all fully enjoyed your Twelve Days of Christmas, as did we. Last Saturday was Epiphany, which we decided would be a good day to assess how our greens are holding up (it was certainly too cold to play outside). It's a Goslin family tradition that we put up our trees and decorate our houses on Christmas Eve. Yes, that's because we wait to see what's left unsold in the shop and on the lot. But what started off as a frugal and practical decision has since morphed into a fun tradition for us. Long story short: it's amazing how long and how well cut greens will last. 

Our exterior wreaths, garlands and swags look perfect (-18 degree temperatures will help, of course!). But how have our interior decorations held up? We violated many of the "rules" that we usually impart to our customers: we placed our greens right next to heating vents, neglected to water them, and placed hot incandescent bulbs on our garland. Yeah, we don't like to fuss much. And yet, everything still looks picture perfect and smells great. 

​​We are most commonly asked about needle retention, so here is what we found. Needles did drop -- especially balsam -- in the initial setup, but after that there was hardly ANY loss observed. The one exception was our garland, which we placed on our staircase and was therefore subject to "little hands" and frequent brushes as we went up and down the stairs. Our conclusion: all of the varieties used in our greens (balsam, white pine, cedar, concolor and fraser fir) have excellent needle retention, especially if they aren't handled frequently. 

Below are pictures from Epiphany day. Does the Christmas tree look familiar? That's the tree from our shop, once twenty feet tall and holding all of our bows, but now cut to fit our living room. Amazingly, it was cut around Halloween and yet continues to hold our ornaments into the second week of January.