Beast of a Scraggly Pine

The past several years we've gone the Home Depot route for our Christmas tree. It's live. It's convenient. But, not wanting to wait another several weeks to ensure that the needles won't drop off in mass before the actual holiday...we wanted to try to cut our own. Figured that would ensure it to be fresh.

Ideally, we want to someday head into the mountain snow and find our own. But, we hadn't planned enough to race out for a permit. So, next option - a cut-your-own lot. Google came up with several places in Layton. Close! We loaded into the truck and headed up.

The lot certainly wasn't picture-perfect. I cropped the city powerlines and loud street from the pictures. We paced around a large house...checked their front and back yards...(while Paige chased a roaming housecat and peeked over chickenwire at a coop)...and returned to the first pine we had liked...Matt went to it with a small saw...(like how returning the saw became a way to keep Paige at arm's length?!)...and we were back on the highway with tree in tote. Kind-of a bizarre hour, really.

Sounds like we jumped a fence and stole someones personal tree, tho it wasn't that impersonal. We saw the man who had taken the time to let the trees grow wild on his property. We heard the girl handing over the saw explain that she was earning a percentage off each tree's price and putting it toward college. Those interactions were good. BUT, I doubt we'll go this route again next year.

The opinions of our pine are mixed: Matt loves it! In his words, "it is a ferocious beast of a scraggly pine." I like it. It is not super fresh nor smelly...but it has yet to drop needles and holds some great Charlie Brown character. And, I like that it completes the festive look with the new lights lining the house outside and the garland lining the front door! Paige likes it. She likes anything that can contain lights and hanging bling. Meg hates it. In her words, "it is the barest tree we ever had!" She gave Matt's explanation of it being better to have more places to hang things a chance, tho it made no logical sense to her that less branches means more hanging places. Ah well, can't please everyone. Tyler enjoys it. He has shaken the bells and tasted the candycane look-alikes, but beyond that has left it alone. Perhaps this year it will remain decorated from top to bottom!