Skip to the main content

The Nordic tree standing at a tall window in flat grey daylight, white, frosted and a few red ornaments on its branches and a woven collar at its foot.

Two pale glazed ornaments hanging on open fir branches against a bare oatmeal wall, a charcoal throw out of focus at the lower left.

A woven collar around the foot of the tree on pale oak flooring, the lit lower branches above it carrying white, frosted and red ornaments.

Nordic

Grey morning

A window, not a lamp

It belongs to the window more than to the lamps. White glass and frost on fine open branches — you can see the wall through them, and the corner does not go dark for having a tree in it. A few of the ornaments are red: plain balls, a pinecone. On a grey morning they are the first thing you see. The collar is light brown basket weave. The gold star at the top picks up the window rather than the ceiling.

You come out at seven, it is grey already, the rain has started again, and the heat has just come on. You stand there with coffee longer than you meant to. By four the light outside is gone and this is the last thing in the room to go with it. Your apartment does not get any heavier in December for having it there.

The tree is a Balsam Hill Aspen Silver Fir. It’s artificial — which is why it looks like this on the twenty-eighth of December, and why there is never anything to sweep. The ornaments are Balsam Hill Signature in white and frosted glass, with several red ones in among them. It stands in a light brown basket weave collar, with a gold mirror star at the top.

Eight hundred dollars for the season. Nothing else to pay, and nothing to do in January.

Reserve Nordic