If I had only known earlier! These pine and eucalyptus wreaths were beautiful! I was foraging for ingredients for our upcoming holiday dinners, and found myself on Yakal Street, picking up my orders from S&L Fine Foods, and I decided to drop by Down to Earth’s shop further down the road, where I spied these fresh wreaths. Made with pine branches from both Bukidnon and the Mt. Province, along with fragrant eucalyptus leaves, pine cones and (not shown) some local pieces of cassia or cinnamon fragrant bark, these are a very nice gift in case you are still crossing names off your list.
I have made a local cypress/juniper wreaths before here and here, but frankly, my attempts looked rather amateurish compared with these. So you could make your own, but if you can’t be bothered, call the folks at Down to Earth to see if they can still make some for you. The leaves tend to dry out, so I like that their version has floral foam as the base for the wreath and even if they crisp up, they’ll have a nice fragrance for weeks to come.
Oh, and while you’re at it, I found young golden beets at their shop, some red and white stripped beets, beautiful baby carrots, amazing red roses and beef tallow (fat) which is the ONLY place I have ever seen it for sale. Many thanks to the folks at Down to Earth for continuing to experiment and bring new produce and ingredients to market.
P.S., Nico, of D2E, gives credit for the idea to make wreaths to Myra P, a long-time reader, who apparently also sells beautiful wreaths made of cinnamon and other materials… Myra, why didn’t you tell me?! Would have been happy to feature a few of the wreaths for readers! :)
6 Responses
Nice and fragrant it must be. Also great that they are sourced within the country.
I love the D2E folks and I am glad they have moved to a more accessible location (they used to be in a red brick building on Pasay Road). I hope they are still there when I move to my new place a stone’s throw away. I super love them; I swear I can live off their products every day, all week (or even all year)!
Nico is an Aberasturi, right? Funny, because I grew up next door to an Aberasturi family…and up until I was 9 or 10, they kept cows in pens right on the property. My dad (an avid gardener) would sometimes go over next door and come back with a few handfuls of “Aberasturi’s gold” for his garden. Needless to say, our vegetable garden was very productive.
Thanks marketman, we try to include some unique materials every year for the wreaths. This year its the local cinnamon “casia” bark , the wreath comes with wreath care tips so you can keep it longer.
HI Kasseopeia, yes we use to have a cattle yard in our house when Cagayan de Oro was still a small city and most folks had backyard gardens back then. Cagayan has grown and we moved the yard to our farm in Bukidnon .
Sorry MM, kinda off-topic.
Nico: Yeah, I miss the good old days when CDO was tiny and heavy vehicular traffic was non-existent. Maybe we were neighbors at some point in the 80’s to early 90’s! Bukingan ng edad! :P
They smell like Christmas! :)
Thanks for the tip, MM. I ordered some this morning to give away.
Hi MM! I’m not sure if I could have handled the volume if I showed you what I do, but will send you an email with photos regardless.
Poor Nicolo, has had to listen to me blabber all these years about so many random things but I’m really glad the wreaths took root. That first year, he had to strip his neighbor’s tree just to get enough cinnamon bark, haha. I’m still hoping he will grow lacquer fern and fresh peas, but reading your latest posts, I think his next project should be poinsettias :D