Friday, January 8, 2010

Christmas is in its box

Well it is all over for another year. Christmas is back in its box slumbering until next year. The halls have been undecked, all the trim is put away, and the tree has been tossed to the curb. The only things I have left of the Christmas accoutrement are the two flaccid Poinsettias dying in my living room. It is kind of depressing.

Don and I have only purchased a real tree for Christmas the past two years. The first two years we lived here we lived in a junior one bedroom at the corner of Bloor and Jarvis. There was barely enough room in that apartment for a couch and a bed, so we could hardly get a tree. Real or not. We had a Christmas plant though. I think it was a rubber tree; we decorated it with a bit of garland. Come to think of it, that was sort of depressing too.

For our Christmases in Whitby we bought a small fake tree decorated it with Star Wars ornaments and snowflakes. We tried to keep the cat away from it. However, we woke up one morning to find the Wicket perched in the tree with Yoda in his mouth. He growled at us when we tried to take the ornament away from him and clung to the branches when we tried to wrench him from the tree. This became a tradition every year actually. Wicket would scale the tree and claim a new ornament as his own. After 6 years of an 11 pound cat scaling the PVC tree it no longer had the classic Christmas tree shape. It was still somewhat triangular but the center section had a gaping hole in it that bowed quite a bit. When we moved to the new house the fake tree did not come with us.

For our first Christmas in the new house we decided that a real tree was in order. We made a day of it, Don, Wilson, my sister and I went to a tree farm to cut our own tree and discovered it was a fun way to spend an afternoon. Don was too sick to do the cut-your-own this time around so we went to Sheridan Nurseries instead. They stored the trees in an outdoor greenhouse but they did something I had never seen before- and when I compare it to the lively experience at the tree farm, this was downright creepy.

All the trees were hanging. Hanging from a rope wrapped around the greenhouse rafters.

It was like stepping into a forest of suicides.

All of them hanging there, swaying in the soft breeze, oozing sap and dropping needles. I wanted to take them all home; save them from this dismal end. Alas, we left with one Fir tree, the one that looked like he had the most to live for. We brought him home, shoved a tree stand up his ass, rammed a snowflake on his head and light him up with LED lights. He was beautiful! He had a good life as a Christmas tree.

And now he is on the curb, pondering the end that awaits us all – the chipper.



P.S. Anyone have any advice on how to keep a Poinsettia alive?

6 comments:

Jo said...

Toss the poinsettia along with the tree. Seriously, do you want to keep a reminder of the holdiays around year long? Walmart has fake poinsettias that look really real...get those for next year. Did you ever find the communicator?

nadinebc said...

No, no more death!!!

I haven't found it yet. Don wonders if maybe it fell off and Wil picked it up think it was a toy. In which case it could be in the house somewhere.

BayGirl said...

That's hilarious, Nadine :0) Our first Christmas away was in Northern BC...we lived in a tiny little apartment too...we drove up the road to the ski hill and hacked down (with a tomahawk) the biggest tree we could find on the other side of the ditch that would fit in the trunk of the Civic. It was so tiny any ornaments we put on threatened to break the limbs until my aunt found us some miniature ones in the dollar store and sent them up.

Sadly I didn't inherit my mother's green thumb, so no advice for the poinsettia...

nadinebc said...

LMAO! I can just imagine the size of a tree that can fit in a civic! Somehow though those are the Christmases you remember most hey?

Karen said...

I agree, toss the poinsettia. It will take more effort to keep it alive than to buy a new one next year. My brother kept one alive for a full year but it involved putting it in the dark basement for a few months, then taking it out in the day and putting it away at night.....a hassle!

Hey, my word verification is "scrabl"....almost like "scrabble". Cool. :)

Jay said...

I agree a room full of upside down trees would be creepy- but practical. I hate buting a cut tree that is frozen they are brittle and you get no sense of how big they are when they are frozen in a heap! I don't like the ones that are already in the netting either - of course you can see how tall they are but how full? Not a chance!
I am with the others once the poinsettia isn't pretty - toss it! I was thinking that very thought about my own - so I will if you do !
I hope you get to cut your own next year - we enjoy this trafition altho the last two years they have come from my son's yard - only 1 left and everyone has commented we should plant a few more to bring them down in a few years;o)