Treeing the Holiday Spirit

It’s that time of year for circular, fairly pointless discussions regarding the real Christmas tree vs artificial. Either way you are guilty….of something or other. Yeah, the artificial tree is used for years, but then lasts eons longer in landfills. Real trees are some creature’s habitat, and needed for erosion control, sequestering carbon, and yes, oxygen. It’s really a no win discussion.

If you decide the real tree is for you, then it’s where and how. To buy from a mono culture tree farm, a tree lot since they are already cut, or to cut down your own? What is one to do with it afterwards? Recycle? Trash it? Or maybe you are one who gets a live tree and plants it in your yard.

Having lived in the foothills of Colorado at 8400 ft elevation for 25 years, we have run the tree dilemma into the ground. In the rescue-an-already-cut-tree-phase, we drove hither and yon to pay $15.00, while other years we went around the mountain corner to pay $120.00. 😳😳 We have purchased from a local tree lot only to find out it came from Canada. (ahem…why??..Colorado is loaded with pines).

We can’t have a live tree. We’d have to keep it in the house until the ground thaws in June and then rent a backhoe to dig in our decomposed granite soil. Nope, and nope.

Being considered a ‘forest fire zone’ by insurance companies, we have to mitigate our property regularly to stay insured. There ya go! We are mitigating, doing our civic neighborhood duty by cutting that beautiful tree from our own property… (ok, that one year, it may have been a few inches into our neighbors yard 😬…). We are content in our logic and will go head to head with anyone on it. Come January its decay feeds the soil, nourishes the deer, or it ends up in our fireplace.

A positive about the yearly ethical tree discussion is that we ARE thinking about it. Always growing up with live trees, there was no environmental awareness or concern. The only controversy was who got stuck standing guard by the ‘possible tree’ while the rest of the family searched on for an even better one.

However you holiday, do it consciously, be merry, and hug a tree.

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