Before the fall

Despite watering the tree the needles now tumble to the ground if you breathe on them. So time before 12th night to photograph some of the ornaments on the tree.

It has become a bit if a tradition on holidays to purchase something for the tree. Canadian bears, NASA Space shuttle, Vatican angel, wooden koalas and so on.

The stag was "local" on a visit some years back to the Burrell Museum. The panda has nothing to do with Edinburgh Zoo. Instead it came from near the site of the Terracotta Army near Xian in China when I visited there in 1982 just a few years after the discovery of the burial mounds. The locals made these and other cloth animals - frogs, butterflies, and so on to sell to tourists. Each year these and other ornaments decorate the tree to remind us of family experiences.