Mistletoe

I know Sarah has already blogged about mistletoe. First she thought it was pretty, so we decided to leave it in the apple tree; then we concluded it was a parasite, so we decided to cut it out of the apple tree; then she did some reading, fell back in love with it, and we're going to leave the rest of it in the apple tree...

And the huge bushes and bunches of mistletoe which we've already cut down? Well, for a while there were some enormous clumps of it littering our yard. The most "beautiful" of these Sarah set aside. We gave some away, there are some still about, and a great deal of it went into a wheelbarrow and up into the woods, where we've been amassing quite a collection of arboreal detritus. It took several barrow-loads to make it all vanish.

Then a couple days ago, Sarah asked me to help her hang some in the house. No big surprise, given her newfound enthusiasm for the stuff. It's hanging all over the place already, on the verandah, and strewn here and there, so I was unfazed by her request... until I saw what she was really thinking about.

This is what a "normal" piece of mistletoe looks like, neatly dressed for holiday purposes, in a tastefully sized and shaped arrangement. Just enough to ensure that someone will get some smooching action over the holiday season:

In fact, it has always been a source of wonder for me that more people don't hang mistletoe over their toilets. Is it really so hard to get kissed? Not for most people I know. Unless, that is, they are sitting on the pot. Only in that location, apparently, does no one want to do any loving (except the Japanese, but they're always a special case). But I digress.

Here is the sprig of mistletoe Sarah wanted me to hang from our dining room lintel:

Yes, that's our bathtub. Our full bathtub. Full of mistletoe.

It's kind of big.

It only took me holding it up into place for Sarah to see that perhaps suspending a small tree from our ceiling wasn't the best way to go. And so now it's sitting in the bath, awaiting her final decision.

I'll keep you posted.