It’s Christmas Day.  It’s 2020.  It’s weird.  But…

I’m writing this in my new house next to my new Christmas tree.  New has been 2020s motto and it’s been hard to keep up. A few brand new ornaments adorn this pre-lit tree I procured on a visit to the FedEx that resides inside the Walmart in my new city.  This is the year we live in.  Where we improvise at every turn.

My pre-lit tree has plain white lights.  I chose this.  Perhaps it was because I had just finished a work errand and was feeling more grown up and thus more sophisticated.  I’ve always been a multi-colored light tree person in the past. Squinting my eyes to make the colors blend together had always been fun.  When I do the same with my new tree, it seems more like a precursor to a migraine.  Perhaps I’m still a multi-colored light girl after all.  

Should I be admitting to a fake Christmas tree on a garden blog?  Meh.  It’s 2020.  For several more days anyway.  After a year like this one, I don’t have it in me to feel guilty about the carbon footprint my fake tree has participated in.  I can feel good that I’ve left the live trees living though.  That’s something.

I’ve actually given a lot of thought to this whole tree thing.  There are plenty of tree farms.  There are also plenty of forests that have been devastated by fire.  So if I wasn’t invested in this life of accounting, I’d buy a tree farm for Christmas tree rentals. 

Rentals as in trees, live trees, borrowed for a price and returned when done.  Think of Blockbuster, but without the stress of rewinding the VHS tape…I mean DVD.  I’d grow trees from seed into little tabletop trees.  I’d rent them to people for the holidays and then grow them bigger each year when returned and then rent them out again at different sizes.  After a sufficient size, I’d plant them or release them into the wild as they say on those nature shows.  

People get Christmas trees.  Forests get trees.  Hopefully fires don’t get fuel – 2020 has left me a bit jaded after all.  Probably not feasible, but it does make me happy to think about reusable live Christmas trees.  Sort of an atonement for my fake tree.

There are 6 days left in 2020 and soon my fake tree will be tucked away in my garage. I’ll store the multi-colored strands that light my new garden too. The days will continue to get longer and longer as 2021 progresses. My garden will grow. It’s not big enough to grow live Christmas trees, but much bigger than the P-Patch I had in Queen Anne. It’s certainly big enough for get-togethers that will hopefully be sans masks, distancing, zoom, and (in the spirit of Harry Potter) that virus that,“must not be named.”

Hopefully, well before the time I decorate my fake tree next year, the world will be a much better, safer, healthier place.