BowerFarm: Summer Sumner Christmas

This was our first experience with Christmas in a warm climate. Not only warm but actually summer. It was actually funny to see the decorations in the city with references to sleighs, and snow and Santa Claus all bundled up in his red underwear. Caroler took over the Cathedral singing, "Let it snow, let it snow" and "Rudolf, the Red Nosed Reindeer"

All around the Christmas tree...

Getting a hold of a Christmas tree was a bit of a challenge. We saw some lots with trees for sale in the morning, but when Bob went back afternoon, they were all gone. He finally found a "Cut your own" and brought home a Douglas fir. It resembled our trees here in that it was green. What a sad tree it was. The ends of the branches were soft and drooped over making hanging ornaments a difficult and temporary effort. The branch would hang over and the ornament would slowly slide down to the end and off onto the floor. It finally dawned on me that there was nothing wrong with the tree except that it had been cut in the middle of its growing season. The ends of the branches were in there growth stage as they would be anywhere in the world in early summer and would not harden up into wood until later in the season at the end of the summer or early autumn.

Our fish shop

Deciding on an appropriate Christmas dinner took us in a new direction. While there were ample supplies of turkey and hams in the shops, we decided cuisine more appropriate for the South Seas would be in order. We decided on seafood: oysters and fish. We found a lovely fish shop recommended by friends and drove down to inspect their catch.

Everyone rose early on Christmas morning and we all opened gifts followed by a lovely breakfast. It was a fairly

reasonable day, a little cloudy, but warm, so we spent a lot of our time sitting on the deck. When dinner time rolled around, Bob fired up the grill and dinner was cooked. We sat down to grilled oysters on the half shell and fresh ahi tuna steaks accompanied with potatoes and fresh salad and a fine New Zealand wine.