Donn and I certainly don’t agree on everything—he likes Bob Dylan and I think Dylan sounds like an animated rusty tire chain, I love to read and relax and not go anywhere before 10 a.m by which point he feels half the day is gone. But one argument we’ve never had is over what sort of Christmas tree is best. We both feel, 100%, that the best tree is a large, full Noble fir, preferably cut down ourselves on a snowy day. (it could happen!) (for my non-Oregonian readers, it rarely snows in the Portland area). We felt this way even before we spent 6 Christmases in the Sahara Desert, where we forked over ridiculous amounts of money for tiny, 18-inch Norfolk Pines, from which I would hang 3-4 ornaments while watching the branches bend alarmingly. (Which, another aside, is why I’m so snarky when people post pictures of 6-foot trees on FB and call them “Charlie Brown” trees just because they’re a little sparse. I have lived the Charlie Brown tree. They didn’t need a little love; they needed several years and some goat fertilizer. We planted them in our yard on New Year’s and left a legacy of tall green trees in that tan and dusty land.)
But this year, we are actually spending Christmas Day with the in-laws in California. Additionally, we have friends who recently bought some acreage, part of which comprised an old tree farm, and they wanted to get rid of the few remaining trees this year. They offered us a free tree—any size from 11 to 20 feet. “You can just cut what you need,” they told us, but I didn’t want to ruin a gorgeous 20 foot tree that, hopefully, some business or hotel could use. We took the 11-footer and brought it home, cut off the top 2 feet which were a sort of stalk, and laid it in the back yard, because it was too big for our tree stand.
The tree dominates the room. It is not pretty. It swallows our ornaments. My poor angel, who for years in Mauritania had to be relegated to being hung on the wall, looks somewhat uncomfortable, perched on top of a too-thick trunk. It doesn’t look like a nice Christmas tree bought on a farm or at a stand; it looks like we went into the woods and cut down a tree. It is a feral tree. I think of it as very masculine. It’s a Noble, but the kind with lots of space between the branches. We need to get more lights, more ornaments, and if ever a tree needed ribbon or tinsel or something, it is this tree.
This gives you an idea of the size. Donn is standing on a chair.
sigh…it’s a long story
We had to put the poor angel on the end of a broom to help her wing her way to the top
13 comments
December 14, 2011 at 9:49 pm
Becky
Ours looks similar… because we got it from the same place! Haha 🙂 But I love it… not so much the little spiders that are now crawling all over our ceiling though. Still, gotta love a free tree!
December 14, 2011 at 10:50 pm
lpennin104@aol.com
I bet it smells fabulous. No tree for us this year as we will be staying with my son.
December 14, 2011 at 11:34 pm
Miss Footloose | Life in the Expat Lane
That tree will be a challenge for sure 😉 but so is ours, which is a “perfect” plastic one we bought here in Moldova. Only because we couldn’t deal with the complexities here of getting a real one and having to buy a stand and it all just got complicated.
This is the first Christmas we will not spend with our kids. (We were in the US at Thanksgiving). The first Christmas in years we’re staying overseas. But we got the tree and we got boxes and boxes of balls because we didn’t ship our own ornaments. We can’t find the right lights and the thing just doesn’t look right. It’s all wrong. But hey you can’t have it all.
I just bought two local geese to cook for Christmas dinner and I’m inviting who ever wants to join us.
December 15, 2011 at 1:00 am
Annie
Wish that fresh pine smell could be sent in a care package!
December 15, 2011 at 5:16 am
Louise
Last year, my sister and brother-in-law hiked out in the woods and got a tree that looked somewhat like yours. It fell over while they were trying to wire it to the walls (too big to even stand up properly in the stand, so wall-wiring was necessary) and pinned my brother-in-law to the floor – all you could see of him were his feet. I’m still not sure how my 5′ no inches sister managed to wrestle it off him, but they did get it set up, only a little worse for wear, and like yours, it took over their entire house for the duration of Christmas.
It was a pretty awesome tree.
December 15, 2011 at 1:05 pm
Rachel
We’ve lived the Charlie Brown tree too. In Nigeria they don’t have evergreens- they have mangos. Our poor Christmas trees were quite sad and my mom would laugh but I always insisted. Hopefully they are growing well in our old yard.
December 15, 2011 at 4:25 pm
Mary Margaret
he he. glad the tree got a good home : )
December 15, 2011 at 6:02 pm
Jennifer@5 Minutes for Books
We agree about many things, but we’ll have to agree to disagree about the Noble Fir. We don’t like those spindly branches. I am in the minority, but we are full Scotch Pines kind of people.
December 16, 2011 at 9:49 pm
JS
A feral tree–too funny! Let’s get together when you get back from CA! It’s been too long.
December 17, 2011 at 12:55 am
Nan | wrathofmom.blogspot.com
I like your tree. It’s very charming.
Last year we had a fir tree for the first time EVER. Usually we get a pine (though most up here are infected with beetles and are dying off) or a spruce (this was one time 5 years ago for an hour before I pitched it out on the front lawn — ugh the stink). So now I’m a fir-fan. We’re off to get one tomorrow — wish me luck.
December 19, 2011 at 5:11 am
Jack Wald
We always cut down white pine trees (really, the most beautiful of pine trees). When I was in 7th grade, I took the toboggan out into the hills (Pennsylvania) and cut down a beautiful white pine. I sweated dragging it over the snow to our house and discovered it was as tall as the house. It ended up being the Christmas tree for the junior high school. In the gymnasium it looked beautiful. Since then, I measured myself against the tree before cutting.
Alas, that is a memory. Now we are in the land of wimpy ceders and we have resorted to an artificial tree. (Having an artificial Christmas tree is like eating a plastic Easter egg.) I look forward to having a real tree with a real smell again.
December 19, 2011 at 8:36 am
MaryWitzl
In Cyprus, our Christmas tree was a Japanese peace lily. I felt a little sad at first — like we were missing out on tradition — then I reasoned that at least our lily had Biblical credentials.
We’ve got a fir tree this year (though nowhere near as big as yours), but I miss that peace lily.
December 28, 2011 at 4:58 pm
Kim
Had to giggle at your description of the tree as “feral” 🙂
While I much prefer a live tree, I knew living overseas would make that a challenge, if not an impossibility. So our last year in the U.S. I bought a fake tree. I picked the skinniest one I could find, since homes tend to be smaller here. I haven’t seen live trees for sale anywhere, so I’m glad I brought this one. It’s better than nothing.
Even though we were gone most of December, including the week right before Christmas, when we returned Christmas Eve I went ahead and decorated the tree. I’ll leave it up a while so we can enjoy it.