Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Stalking the wild Christmas tree

Last week, we cut our Christmas tree.

That's nothing unusual, we've cut our own trees for, oh, about 18 years now. Every year about this time, we keep a sharp eye out for what might become a suitable decoration for our house. But this year we had a bit more trouble than usual.

Younger Daughter and I started out by stalking over a neighbor's land (with permission, of course). Most of his land is field...


...but there was a wooded section as well. However this had been selectively logged a few years back, and no young trees were to be found. At least, none that were suitable for a Christmas tree.


So we came back to our property and did some serious scouting around.


(Here's a flock of Canada geese flying overhead.)


(Here's a chickaree fussing at us.)


We looked at a variety of trees...


...and found a possible candidate. We marked it with sticks to show the location.


A couple days later, we all trooped down to take another look.


We'd had the barest hint of snow. Matilda, Atlas, and Jet watched us go by.


The targeted Christmas tree was in this tightly-packed grove. If we're going to cut a live tree, we prefer to cut tightly-packed ones in order to thin them.


But of course you can never really tell what the tree will look like until it's cut. In this photo, it's the middle tree.


Don got right to work.



Timber!!


One of the advantages of the kids being older is we make them drag the tree back to the house. It's good for them. Builds character and all that.



Once at the house, we measured to figure out where to trim.



Not a bad shaped tree after all!


After we strung the lights and Don topped the tree with the angel, the girls got busy decorating.



Decorating always brings chaos, but it's a fun chaos.


And the results are so pretty!




Lydia gets a few snuggles with Younger Daughter the next day.




It's a low-budget Christmas for us, but that's okay. We remember the Reason for the Season.

2 comments:

  1. Thats a beautiful Christmas Tree, you live in a beautiful place. Merry Christmas; Bruce

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  2. Awww, Lydia! That face! I want to snuggle her myself :)

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