“the light burning all night in the greenhouse”

Almost every year since 1980, we’ve printed a Christmas card on our 19th c. Chandler & Price platen press. The first year the press was in the basement of the North Vancouver house we rented and we had just a little wooden type. I’d have to go out to the printshop to look at that first card to be sure but I think we printed LOVE & JOY! in dark green. We had limited type but we did have the ampersand and the exclamation mark. In subsequent years, I’d make a little lino-cut and John would mount it on a piece of pine. We’d figure out a message–some years a poem of John’s or a brief passage from one of my essays; some years a phrase from a carol we liked–and the best way to set it. This is letterpress printing and each letter is set by hand on a composing stick before being locked into place in a frame called a chase. Over the years we’ve sent cards with little linocuts of a house on a hill (ours), carol ships with their rigging strung with lights (each of those I painted on by hand), coho salmon in the creek near our house, a grouse in a pear tree, a northern pygmy owl (after we saw one in daylight on a walk), a Steller’s jay, a winter wren, a cat in a window with a star by its ear, a tree waiting by the door, a quilt-block star, a spiral, a stocking, and others I’ve forgotten. This year’s lino is our greenhouse mostly hidden by snow. The year before last we had a huge snowfall right around Christmas and it was lovely to look at the greenhouse with its light shining. I wasn’t sure how I’d do the light. I had some foil stars–you can see them in the photo at the top of this post–but they’re too big. I’ve been fiddling with quick brushes of gold paint on proofs of the cut and that’s what I’ve decided to do. John’s poem helped me find that solution.

“the incandescent/bulbs burning.” A wash of rose-gold paint in the tiny wedge of greenhouse showing above the snow. Cedar is burning in the blue woodstove and I’ll clear the table for the job. Two Christmases ago, a snowfall, the light burning all night in the greenhouse. We’ve only been away from home for two Christmases in the 44 we’ve spent together. This year, Angie and Karna will come to us, as they did the year before last, when the snow came up past our knees and the power went out and we sat near the fire with warm drinks and shortbread. Later this week I’ll make the shortbread. Everything else is up to the gods.

Addendum, December 6. We decided the brushstroke of gold paint looked too muddy and went on a quest in the little town of Sechelt to find something that would work to suggest a light in the greenhouse. Small foil stars to the rescue, smaller than the ones in the photograph. It’s not quite what I want but it will serve.