Nice of you to get a live tree Brad, I used to walk into my backyard (25 acres) and cut my own. It is best to give them a smell before cutting though, you never know what might have used that tree previously.
I didn't mean to sound so mean about artificial trees. We've had two artificial Christmas trees over the years, and they were both hand me downs. Imagine that. Hand me down second hand Christmas trees. But that's the way it goes sometimes. We made do. We made do rather happily. We didn't always have a car during our younger city living days, so driving anywhere was sometimes out of the question. Having a tree-in-a-box was perfect for us. Our first very own Christmas tree, wasn't a tree at all. It was mean't to be, but it didn't quite work out that way, but we made do.
We spent our very first Christmas on a farm outside the quaint village of St Adolphe de Dudswell. My wife had serious trouble in her 8th month of pregnancy, and was admitted to the hospital in Sherbrooke. The staff were wonderful, and I was scared stupid. I nearly lost the two stars in my heaven that first week of December, but as it happens, M and our little premie baby both pulled through. She came home, but he stayed in hospital. Of course we made the daily drive to spend all day long by his cot. There was no thought to Christmas or trees or presents or anything really, besides what lay in that little cot. On Christmas Eve we got the call, we could come and bring home our little miracle. When we got back to the farmhouse, I realized we didn't have a bed for him. The cradle my parents had mail ordered hadn't arrived yet. So M made up a dresser drawer for him. He slept in a drawer right next to our mattress, both on the floor. That evening I finally thought of a Christmas tree. Living on a 100 acre farm with fields and forest all around posed no dilemma where to find a tree. There were trees anywhere, everywhere! So I bundled up and put on my snowshoes for a winter search for a tree. I still remember standing in the depths of winter near midnight, feeling weightless between a blanket of snow round my feet and a blanket of stars round my head. I at last found the perfect tree, right on the forest edge. It was not too tall and not too short. Just perfect. Pulling off my pack to start work, I took a step back and looked up. What a wondrous deep velvet sky full of lights! Christmas lights. I prayed and gave thanks for what I had and for what I had been given. I slung my pack back on, pruned a couple low level branches, and headed for home. Those branches would be woven together to make our first Christmas wreath. It hung on our kitchen door by morning, as I made coffee and M fed the baby. We had nothing to unwrap, no presents to exchange, and didn't even have a tree. But that morning we had everything we could ever want.
Pipe cleaner trees have filled the void of Christmas greenery in the intervening years for us. And it's been fine. This year though, I needed to feel and smell a real tree. Maybe for memory sake, I don't know. I could've picked a more perfect tree though. M liked it, the gangly young Lab barked her approval, so it seemed a steal for $35. I tell you what though, if someone was in business making fake trees like this one, they'd go out of business pretty darned quick. At home M said "Move it right there, with the flat sparse side against the wall." I asked "Which one?" She said "That wall, there." I said "No. WHICH flat sparse side?" This tree will be fine once there's ornaments and tinsel filling all the gaps. We'll make do.
