I have had many Christmas trees over the years. I suppose most of us have. If we were to save the one from last year I don’t think we would appreciate it as much, given that all its needles would have turned a brittle red, if there were any needles left.
Having come back home from the tropical hinterlands, what to do for a Christmas tree this year was something of a conundrum. In our haste to ditch the Sunshine State, we had left the old tree behind, yes, a fake tree which had seen its better days and really didn’t seem to be worth the trouble and cost of moving 3,000 miles to a place where we are surrounded by real trees.
The plan all along was to enjoy a real Christmas tree for a change. As noted elsewhere, they are plentiful here. You can still get them down the street for $15. Not a perfect tree mind you, but one that will look just fine once it is loaded with lights, ornaments and garland. Properly decorated, you can get the worst looking tree and it will look just fine in your home.
I still have a preference for Grand Firs. Yes, they tend to be a bit pricier than your basic Douglas fir, but they are very pretty and if I am going to have a tree in the house these days, it had better be a looker.
As anyone knows, getting a live tree is a bit of a science. You need to time its purchase perfectly, otherwise you won’t be able to turn on the lights with confidence, worrying that your home will be caught in one of those horrible conflagrations the local fire department shows on TV each year, caused by a dry tree.
The problem is complicated by the presence of any drying out agents in the home; in our case, a gas fireplace that would be a couple feet away. To fire or not to fire becomes a life and death decision for the intervening weeks. Not for us, but the tree.
I admit to trepidation about tree shopping. For the first time in many, many years, I don’t have a vehicle with a luggage rack on top. The ex-whatever bought an SUV without one. Don’t ask me how she did this, but since I am stuck with the Black Widow, I must also live without the rack that should have been on top of her.
Still, I was willing to give it a go. I do have a fondness for the smell of a pine tree in the house, something that no amount of Pinesol can duplicate, even if you rub the trunk of a fake tree lovingly each day with the stuff, it’s just not the same.
Of course, here in Seattle, these are not fake or imitation trees. They are sustainable trees. In the Northwest we love our trees. Cutting them down is not particularly politically correct, unless they were grown on a tree farm, that is. Going rogue, hiking into the forests that abound here and harvesting your own tree off public lands is frowned upon here. So, it’s either go with a sustainable (fake), buy one off a lot or head to a tree farm and saw one down there.
Our plan initially was to go tree farming. That didn’t really pan out, so the back up plan was a tree lot. Said plan entailed us going there on Dec. 15; not too early that the tree will die and not so late that all the good trees were gone.
As they say, even the best laid plans of mice and men often go astray. As visions of sugar plums faded from my head, the thought of thousands of dead needles in my house and my care came into view instead. I thought back to summers years ago where stray needles were still being plucked out of the carpet, my now bare feet finding each and every one.
We were out on a brief shopping trip for some sustainable garlands when the master plan shifted. I innocently suggested that we visit Lowes, just to see what real sustainable trees looked like these days.
It has been many years since I had tree shopped. It turns out that in that time, a lot has happened in the sustainable tree market. It didn’t take us long to be drawn to a Martha Stewart masterpiece – seven feet of glorious faux branches, needles, cones and even berries. OK, so fir trees don’t have berries, but they looked cool.
Still, it was a magnificent tree, priced to move at just $199 and sustainable. I could not only avoid needle pricks in the summer, but claim my rightful place as an eco-sensitive kind of Northwest guy.
It was an easy sale. Best of all, the tree came in three handy pieces in a pint-sized box. There was no need to find a work around for the lack of a luggage rack and tie ons. No need to crawl through the window after the ropes had been guided through them so we could hold onto them for dear life as we drove away.
And if that weren’t enough, the tree has self-healing lights. If one burns out or even falls out, no matter. Modern technology has found a way to keep all the other 599 lights shining brightly, like the star that burned brightly over the manger.
OK, so I’m exaggerating a bit. Even if I am, I can take solace in the fact that I don’t have to sweat the big tree decision for the next 20 years. I can just pull the old tree out of the box any time I want and create Christmas.
It sure beats having to figure out what to do with a dead Christmas tree. I confess that I once found a very unenvironmentally friendly way of disposing of mine. It was before they had chippers and recycle lots. My recycle plan involved stuffing a now reddish dead tree into the two-foot wide crevice between the PCC grocery store and my apartment. There it sat, presumably until they finally tore the place down several years ago.
In the Emerald City, with a renewed sense of environmental stewardship now that I have my sustainable tree up,
– Robb