1) Dense impenetrable growth.  Attempts to walk in the woods will be met with resistance, usually passive resistance but the forest will go for blood if you persist.  Growth habits tend to overlap and you may find thorns in unexpected places.  

2)  Also trees and shrubs in an enchanted forest will convulse the ground so that you may think you are walking on level ground only to have the ground beneath your feet sink several feet and pull you into a spider infested thorny sinkhole

 3) You may detect the presence of Ents around the edges of your forest.  See JRR Tolkien for more about Ents.  A particularly nasty piece of enchanted forest may attract the presence of more than one Ent.  We have encouraged their presence here.  Ents may appear in your enchanted forest as unusual non-native trees.  Note:  Look for his eyes close to the trunk--near the top.

  4) An enchanted forest of course has paranormal phenomenon.  Please note the first sighting of a UFO occurred near the forest by my house. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maury_Island_incident 

My forest has a vortex.  Curiously this vortex steals forks from my house-just forks.  It tends to deposit extra spoons and knives.  A vortex may give off energy or consume energy.  It has strange effects on the relative energy of surrounding organisms. Note the fork on the dryad's scarf.

 5) An enchanted forest may house supernatural creatures.  In our forest, one of the trees surrounding the vortex is home to a dryad.  Dryads are industrious creatures who protect their trees and serve other purposes in the forest.  We must take their word for their industry because we seldom see them.  We have some evidence that the dryad in our forest guards the vortex and keeps it open so that it can consume more forks.  We also have gnomes and last night a supernatural bear walked right through the wall and halfway into my bedroom.  I screamed and Loren woke up so the bear retreated. 

6) The elusive wildlife in an enchanted forest often reaches an unnatural size with squirrels sometimes growing as big as a cat.  The slugs in our enchanted forest easily reach lengths of seven inches.  While the deer are not unusually large, they are rather bold and aggressive.  They’ve been known to attack large dogs rendering the stupid poodle fearful of them.  We have an unusual number of aggressive snakes that have been known to chase humans.  They reach an super-size for our area.

7) Of course, an enchanted forest is often filled with strange mists and unexplained lights.  Sometimes the trees themselves seem to glow.  At night the lights move and flicker about the forest. 

 

 8) Enchanted forests do not like humans and hate human fences.  They attack fences and attempt to pull them over.  They attempt to thwart attempts to drive fence posts into the ground by putting a tough root where you need the post or by rolling rocks underground to prevent a post from being driven into the ground.

10)   The enchanted forest controls its weather.  Parts of the forest may become unseasonably warm while other parts remain frozen.  Thus while my ponds are frozen on one side of the house dahlias continue to bloom a hundred feet north of the frozen ponds.   

What to write and what not to write?  That is the question.  We all hear the complaints about the perfect Christmas letter where the heroine regales her readers with stories of her perfect children and their perfect accomplishments in sports, music, and academics.  The perfect husband takes his family on no less than three perfect vacations, while landing the perfect big client at the office.  Meanwhile the perfect heroine manages the most perfect law firm in the city, wins an unwinnable case and saves an algae from extinction while driving her children to their activities and so on…

On the other hand, there is my Christmas letter.  Dear Family and Friends, This year we went to work, came home, ate dinner and went to bed everyday except when we went to church, came home, ate lunch and took a nap.  With Love Loren and Delinda.  The problem with my Christmas letter is that while completely accurate it’s a bit short.  My family and friends would like a few details other than the ones about the cat barfing on the bed.  I do include the story of the cat barfing on the bed because I have to say something.

My annual Christmas letter is where I honed my creative writing skills.  We’ve all suspected that the perfect heroine and her perfect family are fiction so I will confess that I sometimes embellish my Christmas letter with details that may be just slightly fictional.  For example, while the slugs in my garden may actually be six or seven inches long, they do not have mass rallies in the Enchanted Forest where they chant, “Down with the lilies!  Devour the cabbage!  Death to the chrysanthemums! De-bud the dahlias!”  I don’t think slugs are that smart.  They’re smart enough, but they don’t have language-that I know of.

My stories about the deer in the gardens are absolutely true—every word.  They really do have secret armies that hide in the forest and train in commando techniques for raiding the tastiest gardens.  They have special-ops forces that will attack large hunting dogs, such as poodles.  Training includes agility for sliding under fences and strength for jumping over.  They must learn to dismantle and reassemble gate latches until they can do it in their sleep.  The deer are smart, they are organized, and they are coming for your roses.

I confess that the walls, carpets and furniture in my house are not sentient, despite the fact that I may have hinted that they were out to get me in the past - except for the piano.  The piano is sentient, and we have a long relationship of lovingly tormenting each other.  I shout at the piano, “One, two, three-and, four.”  It jokingly tinkles back at me, “ One, two, rest, wait-figure-out-the-next-chord, three, four, and what is that note doing here?”  This is a game the two of us have been playing since I was four so if I complain, I’m only joking that my piano is out to embarrass me.

Since I am being honest here, I’ll confess that I don’t go shopping and spend all my hubby’s money.  I do go to the grocery store occasionally, but I seldom buy clothes.  People who spend their lives in the house writing don’t need many clothes beyond their ratty pajamas and a big ratty sweater.  The big ratty sweater is an essential part of the writer’s wardrobe.  I wear mine over my PJ’s when I take Loren to the ferry.  I pretend that people won’t know I’m out in public in my PJ’s and slippers if I have on the sweater.  The big ratty sweater is suitable for garden wear and tending to the poultry.  It is warm enough for sitting and writing, and for harvesting the daffodils.

Let’s face it.  When the only excitement in a writer’s life is what is happening inside her head, a little creativity in the annual Christmas letter is essential.  Perhaps next year, I will update my family and friends on the lives of all my characters.  Others  think their hubby is successful?  Ha! My hero, President Jake has just been asked to lead a United Nations effort on negotiations in the Syrian civil war and to advise the Somalian government on how to strengthen their economy and curb piracy while heading an international symposium on terrorism.  My hero… “Delinda, I have no intention of doing any of those things.  When my term is over, I will go home, putter in the garden, make love to my wife, and watch the sun go down with all my family around me.  Find another entertainment for your letters.  I envy your peace. – Jake”

Oh well, the purpose of this article is not really catharsis through confession but a form of enlightenment for my readers.  The annual Christmas letter should become an exercise in creative writing, but don’t fall into the trap of the fake heroine.  Elevate your common challenges of getting the children off to school to the level of slaying a dragon.  After all, waking up in time to kiss them goodbye as they leave for school is a challenge. 

Let your imagination run free though the wind and waves of your own creative sea.  Let your world and your life become a hero saga of the triumph of human over machine.  Let love triumph over finding your slippers while fatigue loses the battle to throw off the bed sheets.  Your life is exciting and magnificent!  Learn to look at it through adventure colored glasses.

Seattle sits on the shores of the beautiful Puget Sound, a body of water connected to the Pacific Ocean.  The Sound runs about a hundred miles deep into Western Washington.  Because the Sound is part of the Pacific it maintains a constant temperature of about fifty-four degrees year round.  It keeps us cool in the summer and relatively warm in the winter. 

Because we are warm, we garden year round in the Puget Sound basin despite the fact that we are farther north than many cities in the frozen interior of the country.  First let me assure you that it does snow here.  When it snows, everything shuts down until the stuff melts in two or three hours.  We do have winter storms that coat our trees in ice and bring down the power lines.  We comment on these freaks of nature because they are freaks. 

Currently, it is December third.  I have dahlias and roses blooming.  We had a bit of frost a week or so ago, but it wasn’t severe enough at my house to freeze the dahlias or roses.  We are expecting an ice storm but it may pass us by.  My primroses are getting ready to bloom.  Many people plant pansies for winter color.  I prefer primroses.  I have an apricot abutilon outside the living room window that is covered in flowers.  On the north side of the house I have enough blooming fuchsias to satisfy our hummingbirds.  I plan to go out and harvest for bouquets soon.  I would take flowers to the Farmers Market if I were not so busy with other projects.

The vegetable garden still holds some broccoli, cauliflower, kale, beets, cabbage, leeks, Brussels sprouts, and lettuce.  I should bring in the last of the summer squash.  Next year’s garlic is coming up nicely.  I won’t start picking the garlic greens until spring because we have such short days for the poor dears to try to feed themselves.  The artichoke plants are getting huge.  We’ll continue to eat from the garden through Christmas.  Our lack of daylight hours slows growth until about February.

The down side of the winter garden is that I had to fill the slug traps last week because I found slugs in the kale.  Hubby mowed the lawn two weeks ago and it really needs it again.  He will need to mow before Christmas.  Not only does the grass grow all winter, the weeds love the cool damp weather.  Dandelions send their taproots deep into the garden beds while their leaves soak up as much sun as we have.  The invasive buttercup invades.  I suspect that pests are hibernating comfortably under my fruit trees. 

I’m still planting bulbs for spring.  Every day I hope to get the last of them into the ground.  Perhaps they multiply in the garage where I store them.  I don’t seem to be getting to the last bulb.  Bulb planting is slow because I weed as I go.  I can plant bulbs up until New Years and still have them bloom.  After New Years, they might not get enough days of cold in order to bloom.

My neighbors plant their pea seeds in September and get a head start on pea season.  I’ve tried fall planting peas but the poor plants get a fungus or mold and wither away. 

How much we garden in the winter is subject to microclimates.  Storms that come out of the north often don’t come as far south as my garden but may hit friend’s garden four miles up the road.  My daughter’s garden is closer to the water than either my friend or myself.  She may be out digging in the dirt when we are snowed in.  (Snowed-in means I have two inches of very wet snow.)

I am thankful for my temperate garden.  I do love flowers and gardening.  Still, if the weeds are not to completely control the gardens, I must be out in forty-degree weather digging the things.  On the other hand, my winter bouquets are the most beautiful bouquets of the year.  I am blessed to live on my island in the middle of the Puget Sound.