Christmas Tree

We went up to Cox Farms this afternoon to pick out a Christmas tree. I grew up with real trees in the house for Christmas, so for the years I spent in New Mexico as a poor undergrad and Maryland as an even poorer grad student, I really missed the smell of pine during December. (Though we did always have a Christmas tumbleweed in NM, and I put up a 3-foot fake tree in my MD apartment, it just wasn’t the same.) So, two years ago, after my first year as a “real world” employee, I decided to ditch the 3-foot fake tree and trade it in for a 5-foot real tree. I can’t see myself going back any time soon.

It snowed on Friday, so all the trees in the lot still had crunchy bits of snow in their needles. When we got our tree into the house, we threw bunches of towels around the base to catch the drippings. Ares promptly curled up on the towels, and stayed there until they got too wet. The tree dripped enough water that I didn’t need to fill up the stand with water last night (though I tried, and nearly overfilled it in my enthusiasm).

Today it was dry enough to decorate, and once again I was able to find places for all my ornaments. It doesn’t feel at all sparsely decorated, but I think this means that I need to collect more ornaments and continue getting larger and larger trees each year!

(That’s Ares sitting on the package. He didn’t like that I used up all the room under the tree for presents and stuffed toys.)