Well, here we are at Christmas time again. As usual nothing is happening here except the usual Christmas get ready to be invaded stuff. Granny and I have been sitting here watching the Christmas lights blink. Wow, what an exciting time. (Even though they aren't blinkers, usually by the time I get them on the tree, I always call them "Blinking Lights!")
We had a light snow the other day. It was great. Granny happened to look out the bedroom window (scrapbook room) and saw a fir tree that we had planted years ago in the corner of the hay field. (It's in a place where I can't get machinery in to cut hay.) She thought the fir tree would be a good Christmas tree.
Before we get into that we need to talk about the standard "Christmas Tree Capturing Ritual" (CTCR). You know that we have extensive traditional rituals here on The Farm so this is another one. (I could write a book on our rituals.)
The usual "Christmas Tree Capturing Ritual (CTCR)" goes like this. We go up to THE Place (our property out in the woods) in September and make remarks like "That looks like it would be a nice Christmas tree". Then we go home and forget where it was. Then in October we find another one and in November we find another one. All of them perfect beauties.
When we go to Portland, Oregon right after Thanksgiving we see them harvesting trees and flying them by helicopter from one end of the tree farm to the other. That reminds us that we need a Christmas tree in a week or so. Then we go home and can't find a tree.
We usually go to our closest small town and look and then make it to all the stores that have them and then go to a local tree farm and buy a big one which we load onto the red trailer, drag it home, drag it into the house and put on the decorations and "Blinking Lights" and that completes the CTCR.
So this year Granny saw the tree in the corner of the hayfield about three weeks before we needed one. I went and looked at it and thought it would do and each successive time I looked it looked even better.
"Granny, you need to go out and look at the tree. It's pretty tall but it looks pretty good to me."
She didn't go out to look at The Tree.
We have a cathedral ceiling that's eighteen feet up with a post in the middle of the great room which is our living room, dining room and kitchen. It takes a big tree. Most of our trees have been about twelve feet tall. Several times we have had a spruce tree (from THE Place) and several years we have had pine trees captured at the tree farm and a few times we have bought gold plated fir trees from some other tree farm. (I say gold plated because of the price - six million dollars a foot more or less.) Anyway, each year the big question is: "Where can we get the most beautiful, filled out, shapely and lovely tree?" (The answer is NO.)
I asked Granny to go look at "The Tree" several times in the weeks after Thanksgiving but it got cold out with the wind blowing and we made several trips to the Big City to go shopping and even one trip to the Big Big City.
The day finally came when she demanded to have a Christmas tree. I rounded up Number 1 grandson (GS) to help, kindly told her that it was a big tree, reminded her that she hadn't looked at it close up, and then fired up the chainsaw and went and cut it down. Number 1GS drove the four wheeler and hooked up the red trailer and helped put the tree on the trailer. I took pictures and assisted around the edges.
He took the tree into the back yard and backed it up to the deck and we carried it in the doorway. I was sure it was no taller than thirteen or fourteen feet but in the doorway, between the door and the standing up place, the tree grew three feet taller. I know that happened because as we stood it up it kept getting closer and closer to the ceiling until we had it standing up beside the pole and it grew to within a foot of the ceiling. It was a Christmas miracle! (The miracle probably was that we got it to stand up without breaking my back, neck and shoulders. I guess that was saved for the ladder work in putting on the decorations.)
We now have a very tall Christmas tree and it's obviously not my fault. And it is a beauty! You should be so lucky as to see it.
So - just to assure you that nothing interesting, exciting or strange ever happens out here in Ho Hum County let's just continue on as though nothing happened and pray for snow to cover up the place in the hayfield where we cut the tree down.
Have a Merry Christmas and a boring New Year out in the country.
(Do I need to remind you that I like it that way?)
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