Watch My Food Grow ~ A South Florida Raised Vegetable Garden

I Have a Christmas Story

For the last 8 or 9 years, our tree has been a Norfolk pine in a pot on my pool deck. Another year’s growth made it too big to carry inside, so I was stalling with decorating, until last Saturday.

I attended a supper that had a white elephant swap for Christmas. My gift was an artificial, 4-foot tall, pre-lighted tree in a pot… stuffed into the original box which was taped up with several layers of packing tape to keep it all together… enough tape to prove that it must have been used for several years.

Well, I didn’t have one!

Tonight, grandson Malcolm was tasked with taking it out of the box and unbending the limbs into a tree-shape suitable for Christmas. He did his best, but it still looked scrawny. That’s okay, because we decided it was a Charlie Brown tree.

We set it in the usual Christmas tree space in the living room and plugged it in. The lights came on first time… on the bottom half of the tree. The wires had been cut and tied together at some point, so there would be no warm glow from the top half of the tree. That’s okay. It’s a Charlie Brown tree.

Makeshift Ornaments

Since we did not bring in the big tree from previous years, I did not bring the boxes of ornaments down from the attic. Instead, I used what I found in different drawers and the grandkids’ toy box.

 

 

 

I found a single wreath ornament that missed being boxed last year, a piece of red ribbon in the wrapping paper drawer, a bag of stick-on bows left from last year, several small toy trucks and a clip-on silver poinsettia… all of which are now residing on the tree.

The pièce de résistance was ‘Chester the Tall Goat’ (actually, a giraffe) that Malcolm got from his teacher today. He will be leaving when Malcolm goes home tomorrow, but that’s okay. It’s a Charlie Brown tree.

Not Bad!

Since Malcolm will not be in town for Christmas, we celebrated his Christmas tonight. We considered it a dry run for the big day. It worked beautifully!

I think this is the best  ‘Charlie Brown’ tree we’ve ever had.

Tags:   Christmas tree · Norfolk Pine1 Comment