A Wild Christmas Tree
After lunch today, hubby and I started out looking for a Christmas tree. I dislike artificial trees and also the sheared live trees. Both are too thick and you end up having to hang ornaments on the outside of the branches. I decorate my tree from the trunk out to the tips of the branches. My tree usually has around a 1000 lights on it, sometimes more. Many years I’ve hit the 1200 mark.
Anyway, I was expecting to have to spend at least an hour or two looking for a tree. I hadn’t spotted one ahead of time like I usually do so I was prepared to spend some time looking. We did check out one tree across the road from the house, but I didn’t feel comfortable cutting it if I could find another. The beavers have almost stripped all the trees off the hillsides on our lake and every bit of growth is important to keep erosion down.
After looking at the one across the road, I decided we would check the property behind our garage. It is an old horse pasture and has slowly been going back to the wild. Many of the trees have grown too big and I really didn’t want to cut down a 30 foot tree to get my Christmas tree.
We looked at a couple and then off in the distance I spotted one growing in a clearing. When we got up to it, it was taller than I had anticipated, but not as bad as I thought. After walking around it and checking it from all sides, I decided it would work. I had my hubby cut it up as far as he could reach so that a new tree could start from the cutting. Did you know that if you cut a balsam above a ring of branches, that one of those branches (and sometimes more) will begin to grow straight up and form another Christmas tree?
After we cut it down, I realized that we would have to cut it more once we got it back to the house. I wanted to have level ground to work on so hubby carried it back and then we trimmed it down by about 2 feet. I probably will have to trim it some more, but I hope not.
Right now its sitting, or rather leaning in our entry way warming up slowly. I don’t have the clay table cleaned off yet or the table moved so that I can put the tree up. Probably won’t be able to do that until Monday.
Here’s our wild tree, warming up on the porch, waiting to come inside.
