Festive arrangement

Foiled in my attempt to get a Christmas tree this year (“Too much mess,” the spouse correctly observed), I resorted to more local measures and clipped a few excess boughs off the dwarf blue spruce in my garden. Then I fetched up my seven favorite ornaments from the basement, added in a sturdy candle from the supply we had purchased for earthquakes and other natural disasters, and voila—Christmas! When it’s shot from close up like this, you can barely tell it from a tree.