Our colleagues at the Durango Herald had an article last week on the comparative merits of real trees versus fake trees. I went to a fake tree the year my son left for college, because it\u2019s really hard for one person to stand up and secure a real tree.<\/p>\n
So I got a small fake tree, maybe 30 inches tall plus the base. I got rid of all the old decorations, some of which were quite old with sentimental value, and got new ones the right size for the little tree.<\/p>\n
But after three or four years, I was missing a full-size tree, and they had them on sale at Lewis Merc. I bought one. It came in a box big enough to serve as a coffin for a small adult. No doubt an employee got it in the car for me, but I had to get it into the house. I\u2019ve suppressed that memory.<\/p>\n
Then I had to assemble the tree. That was a major pain in the butt, getting the three trunk sections stuck together and the lights with each section plugged together. So I don\u2019t take the tree apart once the season is done. With a tow rope around the base, I drag the entire standing tree into my storage room for its 11-month rest. Each year on the second weekend of December I drag it back out to the living room.<\/p>\n
That happened Sunday. I carried the little tree out on Saturday and got it mostly decorated. Back when I bought the big tree, I thought about taking the little one to the thrift store, but now it provides cheer in the other downstairs room.<\/p>\n
Like the big tree, it came pre-lit with pre-LED lights. Last year I had a package of multi-color LED lights I bought the previous year when they were on sale. I put those on the small tree last year and use those instead of the old lights. Maybe eventually I\u2019ll do that with the big tree.<\/p>\n
The big tree is a mutant conifer with at least three types of branches all together \u2013 long needle, medium, and short needle. It\u2019s a tree never seen in nature, but it looks nice.<\/p>\n
I have to use a ladder to start the red Mardi Gras bead garland at the top and to put the upper-most ornaments on. The bottom ornaments must be unbreakable, because I have cats. Once it\u2019s fully decorated (meaning I can\u2019t find any more places to hang ornaments), the tree is glorious. On occasion, I move ornaments around for better effect, or if I spot any remaining open space.<\/p>\n
As the light faded Sunday afternoon, I plugged in the lights and was reminded once again of how much I enjoy these trees, the light and cheer they provide through the darkest days of the year.<\/p>\n
I hope yours does the same.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
colleagues at the Durango Herald had an article last week on the comparative merits of real trees versus fake trees. I went to a fake tree the year my son left for college, because it\u2019s really hard for one person to stand up and secure a real tree. So I got a small fake […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5758,6359],"tags":[],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-107648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-columnists","category-columnists-view-from-the-boondocks"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107648"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107648\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107648"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=107648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}