“Douglas,” our chipper wee friend of a Christmas tree, sits discarded in the backyard. Having completely missed the free tree chipping the second weekend in January, we have no idea what to do with it.
I only remembered the tree at all when the snow thawed last Friday.
“Oh yeah,” I remarked to BoyRoommatefriend, “The tree.”
It looks so pathetic hunkered there in the corner of the yard, tilted sideways against the grass like a tourist who fell asleep on the beach.
The suggestion was made to cut it up into tiny pieces and squeeze it into the compost, but somehow the sheer brutality of such a feat made me wince.
This is the first time I’ve ever had my own Christmas tree to deal with. In years past, it was either the tree at my parents’ house, or we simply never had a tree.
Do we just leave it there in the corner of the yard until it decomposes into nothing, returning once more to the sodden earth from whence it came? How long till the needles fall from it, leaving bare skeletal remains? Will a forensic anthropologist, like television’s Bones, do a post-mortem, and point a wavering finger in my direction whilst snarling an hollow-but-accustatory: “You….” Will I forever be deemed incapable of harbouring any responsibility whatsoever?
Probably.
Maybe the tree will stick it out until next Christmas. That would save us a quick $23.
It is less than eleven months away now, you know.
The first year my sister and I celebrated Christmas away from the parents, we got ourselves a Charlie Brown-esque Christmas tree. Post-Christmas we took a hacksaw to it and bundled it up curbside for the organic waste people to spirit away. It was not glamorous.
The next year we got a fake tree. It was full and sturdy and oh so easy to pack away when Christmas was through. I used to scoff at people who didn’t have real trees, but the older (and lazier) I get, the more sense I see in their choice.
LikeLike