Day IV: Christmas in Colonial Williamsburg, 2012

Isabella reporting:

Today's post will be something of a "wreath round-up", with a few of my favorites of this year's crop. The restrictions for the decorations in Colonial Williamsburg are succinct: no plastic or glitter, nothing electric, nothing modern (sorry, Santa and Snoopy.) Materials must be natural, with an emphasis on things native to Virginia and plenty of imagination. As always, please click on the images to enlarge them to see the details.

The large wreath hung on the railing, above, features one of the favorite wreath-making fruits - apples - but in three ways. Among the pine cones and greenery are not only small lady apples, but also pineapples and large green hedge-apples (which, at least in my part of Pennsylvania, are also inelegantly called monkey-brains by middle school kids.)

The house, above left, earns the title of the Apple House during the holiday season, because apples are always placed in the convenient little niches scattered through the brickwork. This year the house's decor also includes antique children's toys, with a wooden sled over the door and old-fashioned wooden tops hanging from the twin wreathes and over the door.

I wondered if the house with the colorful vertical garland, right, is owned by a cook or gourmet. Certainly all the foodstuffs hung in a row would please the palate as well as the eye, including sliced, dried oranges, pomegranates, artichokes, and cinnamon sticks.

Everyone does have their favorites, however, and it looks as if one of Colonial Williamsburg's favorite residents does, too, lower left. Sitting beneath the wreath of the Post Office is Shilling the head coachman-interpreter's cat, who is perhaps longing for a wreath decorated with catnip mice - all natural and indigenous, of course.

Photographs copyright 2012 by Susan Holloway Scott.