On the first day of Christmas...

The Christmas season has officially started at our house. This morning the kids awoke up to find our little hollow book titled "The Twelve Days of Christmas". In the book was a little note which read:

One the first day of Christmas my family and me... brought home our Christmas Tree!

And here it is!




After a long line of mishaps we finally got it up, balanced and decorated. We discovered at home and after we paid, that the base of the tree was warped and curvy which made it difficult to centre it and secure the pins that hold it in place. The trouble was so bad I nearly swore off real trees for good, and I was preparing myself to drive to the nearest department store to buy the most artifical tree I could find, just to be done with it.

We had to reposition it numerous times and for a while thought we had done well until we started to put the decorations up and one bump sent it tipping over. We lost one ornament in the fray.

In the end my husband had to bring in his saw, we undecorated the tree in haste and ended up cutting off another four inches to get to a nice straight part... but now I have some lovely cedar boughs to decorate the shelves around my house. It smells so nice in here.

We decided on a real tree three years ago after learning that artificial trees release a toxin into the air as it breaks down over time. This toxin is not good for the Earth and neither is the petrol-based process used to manufacture the fake plastic tree to begin with. If you live in an area of the world where evergreens are abundant and tree farms abound (like my neck of the woods) then a real tree is a local solution that quickly returns to the earth in less than a year after the last Christmas light is packed away. I have the remnants of three trees at the tree line along the back of our rental property, the first one can no longer be found, and the other two are mere shadows almost returned to the earth.

Once we get our land, we'd like to buy a potted tree to give it a try. It would be small, maybe a table top size but we could plant it in the yard in spring when it thaws (probably storing it in the greenhouse until then). But we'll deal with that when we get there... hopefully next Christmas.



Here's a picture of the outside of our house with my tomato cage tree, my berry wreath, the two willow trees that I plan to use for my peas and beans in the spring. I am all about multi-purposing to save space, money and minimize our consumption.