This year, as many other years, our Christmas tree came from within spitting distance of our house. It’s an Eastern Red Cedar, a.k.a. an Eastern Juniper–those ubiquitous evergreens that populate so many fencelines and driveways around here.
Who you callin’ Charlie Brown?
They make odd Tannenbaums: They’re not exactly conical, and they provide a lot fewer places to hang ornaments than the trees you buy in parking lots. Also, they have a smell that’s a bit less pleasant than the piney scent I remember from childhood. But, well, they’re free. At least when you have them on your own land, they’re free.
We had fun heading out into a drizzly afternoon, saw in hand, to harvest our tree, then hefting it back down the hill and trimming it to a manageable six-foot height. But, as always, I experienced a pang upon cutting it down. All that photosynthesizing, unceremoniously ended!
This NPR story reassures me that an artificial tree would not, in fact, increase the greenness of our holiday. (It also informs me–this is unbelievable–that a lot of those parking-lot trees are grown in China!) Still, I feel like we should at least plant another tree this year to offset our sacrifice.
Anybody else’s living room sporting a cedar tree? Or can you boast a live tree with a root ball, soon to be replanted?