Looking for mistletoe
On this day we went out to pick some mistletoe. It was a new tradition for me that I had learned only in France. Every Christmas Sophie would bring us a sprig of mistletoe, which we would hook into the center of the ceiling. After a year, the old branch would be replaced by a new one.
This Christmas, spent in Auvergne, I could personally participate in the gathering. One day we armed ourselves with garden shears and drove out in the car in search of mistletoe.
Sophie seemed to know exactly where we were going. At one point we stopped in the middle of a field that to my mind was completely similar to other fields we had passed.
And indeed, a little way off the road, we found a couple of trees on which these plants flourished.
The task was not an easy one. On one side of the trees there were cows and bulls, slowly but surely approaching the uninvited guests. On the other side was a barbed wire that prevented climbing the tree. In addition, I had a pair of garden shears in one hand to cut off the mistletoe branches.
With each successfully cut branch, I wondered more and more how Sophie had managed to do this trick herself in previous years.
At one point she even had to bring her car under the tree to help me get to the higher branches.
With great effort, we still managed to gather a whole bag of mistletoe, and Sophie made a dozen of sprigs, which she later distributed to her friends. One of them now hangs in our apartment in Paris.
It is the first picture here that was not taken by me. But I like it so much. Cléa does not photograph often, but she clearly has the vision of a photographer. I couldn't have taken this picture better than she did.
The thin branches of the tree contrast with the light background of the sky and, like veins, cut the space with sharp black lines. And among these branches is me, the mistletoe picker, frozen in a dramatic pose, like the hero of a Renaissance painting, completing the pattern of the tree trunk with the curve of my body.
Even the unsophisticated eye should be pleased with the harmony of this picture.
Also on this day:
