Category — Jim's Thoughts

One special treat we enjoy around this time of the year is a box of clementines imported from somewhere far away. They’re little mouthfuls of sunshine that taste particularly nice while the sky stays dark so much of the day.

Plus there’s the box!

I’m one of those folks who can’t throw something away without looking at it hard trying to figure out what else it might be good for. With clementine boxes it’s hard NOT to come up with projects for them. The “wood” of the clementine boxes is generally speaking low grade balsa but it’s durable enough for many things.

One extremely simple clementine box project that I continue to get compliments on is a stable for our creche. For those unfamiliar with the tradition, some christians decorate their yule time houses with a miniature display of the first Christmas. I’m told the tradition dates back to St Francis who gathered actual living animals and obviously didn’t stage the event inside a house. Contemporary domestic displays can be as simple as a baby Jesus, Mary and Joseph or as complex as an entire village. Ours is pretty mid-range. We have about 20 figures including a half dozen sheep, several goats and a donkey. They’re not big, roughly 1/12 scale which makes a standing figure maybe 6″ tall. Someday I’d like to have a couple dozen angels, a whole squadron of ‘em, enough to terrify a rough and tumble shepherd. I’d also like to hand paint the figures, make ‘em look a little less European. Maybe I’ll get to that this year. In honor of this being Christmas day, I wanted to share this project.

The first step of any clementine box project is to eat the clementines or at least empty the box. Let folks know you’re looking for clementine boxes and you might end up with PLENTY. The next step is to carefully disassemble the boxes. This is done with a flat head screw driver, a pair of pliers and a phenomenal amount of patience. Honestly, this task will take more patience than you think you have and even then, you’ll ruin lots of the subassemblies. Don’t take the boxes apart any more than you absolutely need to. The manger has parts of three different clementine boxes. Once you start examining them, you’ll realize that different boxes have quite different kinds of construction. I was perhaps fortunate to come across a box that had a solid piece of balsa for the bottom. I have a container filled with clementine box parts stowed away in the basement just waiting for the next time inspiration strikes.

For construction the best adhesive is just a plain white glue. Spread a bit on both sides of the joint and let it get tacky before you join them. If you can manage it, try to stabilize the joints while the glue set us. Those big pincher style paper clips work as clamps for some angles. If you’ve got an upholstery stapler, well, that’s the best tool for the job but I’ve also used wire brads and a tack hammer. Heck, I’ve also held pieces together with my fingers until the glue set.

If you want to re-create my exact design, I’ve tried to include photos from enough angles that it should be possible to figure that out. But be open to serendipity too. Like the little loops of wire that the angel hangs from was in the original box. I tried to take in consideration some of the negative space as well as the existing angles and proportions of the material. What this meant practically was that I only cut one piece of wood. I used a fine toothed hack saw but I bet that a nice sharp razor blade cutter and a straight edge would also work.

I thought of finishing the manger with a wood stain but my tests just came out looking muddy. Balsa takes paint quite well. Or another idea that I haven’t tried would be to cover the surface with patterns made with a wood-burning iron. But for this particular project, I decided to keep the wood raw which I think relates to the theme of the story that the display is depicting.

A couple other silly addenda: When we bought our figurines some 25 years ago we made sure to find a set of figures where the baby Jesus is separate from the manger. Since we first had kids, it’s been a family activity to assemble the creche. We always place the display low enough that the kids could play with the figurines. And in a little bit of Christmas mischief, every year I would hide the baby Jesus. We’d always make an elaborate play out of looking in the box, in the wrappings but no Jesus. Until Christmas morning. I’d wake up the kids, yelling like a maniac “Baby Jesus is here! Baby Jesus is here!” We continue the tradition even though the kids have been on to my game for years.

Last weekend, we were hit with the first “pre-winter storm” of consequence and when it was finished, the yard was buried under roughly 10 inches of snow. It’s stuck around all week and shows no sign of disappearing before Christmas. If anything, we’re supposed to get a few more inches before Santa’s arrival. I’m mostly relieved. Anything I didn’t get done out there by now will just have to wait until Spring, more or less. There are still a couple projects I have to do out there:

• I still plan to get at least one last meal of kale though I’ll have to excavate a bit through the snow. That’s the part that will take 20 minutes. Perhaps it’ll be a good side dish for Christmas Day when we have our one big piece of beef for the year (a standing rib roast) served with home-made horseradish.

• I will prune a bit on the apple tree. This task has been itching at me all year. I’m pretty sure I can make the tree happier in its surrounding but I didn’t really want to nip at it while there was still sap in its veins. The first tree I pruned was the overgrown apple in my folk’s backyard. The tree was tall; the day was cold and I had no ladder. I had a good sharp saw though. I ended up with enough wood to smoke a turkey breast. I won’t get anywhere near that many branches from this little sapling but I think 20 minutes of pruning can help coax it into making a few more apples next year for us (or for the birds!)

• I really should adjust the tension on the raspberry trellis. A few years back I made a raspberry trellis to support the brambles of our black raspberries. I used some leftover 4 by 4 to make two ends that sort of look like telephone poles and I strung clothes line between them. They’re quite handsome, if I do say so myself and very useful. It’s just that over the years the clothes line has gotten a bit loose. Cinching it up should take about 20 minutes. Then again… maybe that can wait ’til spring too.

I really can’t think of much more that I *have* to do outside.

But just because the 20 Minute Garden is tucked in for winter, it doesn’t mean that the 20 Minute Gardeners have nothing to do. We just get to move our base of operations inside and instead of iced tea, we’ll drink hot tea with honey.

I forget this trick every year, it seems. But I remembered in time for the last leaf raking of the year. The first thing you should know is that we collect and keep our leaves as mulch. (There are assets and liabilities to using leaves as mulch but they’re best discussed elsewhere.) I think the trouble comes because I keep thinking about leaves with the old fashioned mindset as something to throw away. What this means is that I usually end up collecting them in trash cans and then lugging the trash cans to the garden bed. This is difficult physical work, both the bending over to lift the leaves into the cans as well as carrying the leaf-full cans.

But if you’re going to spread the leaves immediately on your garden beds, then there’s no need to use a trash can at all. Use a tarp. Rake the leaves into a pile as usual, then rake them onto the tarp. Roll the tarp up like a big burrito and it’s ready to move. It’s easiest if you’ve got a partner to grab the other end but as long as there isn’t much wind, you can just pull the tarp along behind you.

We left raking the final batch of leaves until tonight, until the final moments of daylight for that matter. But using a tarp for collection helped us finish up in very short order. Just in time too. About an hour after sundown, a gentle snow started to fall.

Just a little over a year ago, this is how the re-birth of our garden began, that is, with destruction. We had this wonderful old carriage barn that had a dirt floor that was damp year round, sagging timbers and a gentle lean that increased year by year. We decided to make the painful choice of taking it down ourselves so we could salvage as much of the cool weathered barn wood as possible. This is a movie we made of the last few moments of that task.