As some of you may recall from my Thanksgiving post, I had my appendix taken out a little before Turkey Day that year. Our two boys were young, and the Christmas holidays were a series of events that were pretty family focused. My wife had been yakking with girlfriends about the latest trends in Christmas trees- The Living Christmas Tree. The benefits were touted as; 1. No tree would die for a tradition. 2. It would smell like the great outdoors without scented aerosol sprays, with their propellants harming the ozone layer. 3. You could plant it when you were done, returning the blessed oxygen producer to the land- saving Earth in your very own back yard! Yeah, right.... So the guy whose stitches were out, but still had a fair bit of healing of stomach muscles to do yet- is sent to fetch the Tree That Saved Christmas. I get to the nursery and inquire if they have this miracle of holiday marketing and where they were kept. A teenager the size of a Hi-Lo says "Follow me" and we end up at a couple of rows of really small trees attached to really big clumps of dirt(wrapped in burlap). From the high prices, I knew they had been reading the same articles as my wife had seen... I picked one out, and Human Hi-Lo grabs it and carries it to my car, putting it in my rather deep trunk for transport home. All the way home, I'm working my engineer-like brain as to how I'm gonna get this d*mn thing out of the trunk and into the house without ripping my appendix scar open! I get home, snow is everywhere, and I give the tree a heave-ho that just jiggles it, with no upward motion. I swear when I looked at it, it said "I'm heavier than that, you cripple-Buahahahah!". Taking a page from history (Egyptians engineering Pyramids) I levered it to the edge of the trunk, then flipped it onto one of the kids' plastic snow sliders. I dragged the beast into the house on this snow saucer right into the living room, informed my wife to leave it on there, cover it with some Christmas looking cloth, and start decorating- I was DONE. All OK, followed instructions for care until spring planting. I threw it out by our dryer vent, and waited 'til spring to plant.
Spring came. Snow melted, leaving our backyard full of the winters' supply
of uncollected Airedale poop. I had dug a big hole in the front yard to plant the tree, and figured I could kill two turds with one stone- so I threw at least 40lbs of recycled Iams dog food in the hole, and threw the tree on top of it. On quiet nights, I swear you could hear that tree screaming as it grew.... The picture is of that very tree, 20yrs later. I used to cover it with white Christmas lights, until it got too big. There is still a strand of them up there somewhere I couldn't get down.... All kidding aside, today it is one really beautiful Blue Spruce!
