Xmas tree.

Xmas tree.

Posted on 20 Jul, 2008 10 comments

I know it is a bit early in the year, but I was just out of the blue thinking of our plot of pine trees, which we had on the farm and were planted on the hill. This should have been mentioned in Greening Australia as well I guess, as there were 20.000 of them. Pinus radiata. They came as seedlings and after a few years they needed pruning up and then at 10 years they needed thinning, trunks used for fence posts ( after treatment ), then again at 15 years, and these were for crates, boards industry, then at 20 years all of the rest were harvested for housing. Anyway, since they were knee high we’ve been using them as Xmas trees. Every year we went up that hill with the children to choose a sweet little tree, placed it in a bucket of water with bricks to hold it steady and tied the top onto a beam so it would not topple over. The smell was just wonderful, a real tree in the house, whilst you couldn’t even buy Xmas trees here like in Europe and US. It lasted well through the heat, but after New Years Day the needles dropped and out it went. The children grew big and had other things to do, remember it was always summer holidays here. So one year I said:”This is going to be the last time I climb up that hill, sawing down a tree and getting sticky gum on my hands, then dragging it through the dusty paddock back home”. And only the youngest one offered to help. We always sat there first looking down through the trees onto the farm below. It was peaceful, shady and the smell wonderful. There was no dust on the ground, just heaps of pine needles. So there we sat, contemplating how things had been in the last few years and this was going to be the last time we went through this annual ritual. Sad in a way, but boy, was I looking forward to next year, to buy a real artificial tree, lol! Those would look much more like the real thing they had in Europe, a spruce, and they would be much denser too. Anyway, we got up and cut it down. It was by now hard to find something so small it would still go through the front door! But we managed. We knew anyway that pretty soon our pine forest would be harvested so we might as well end this Xmas tree ritual. It was hard, it was at least 30C, the needles were prickly and the gum was sticking to our gloves. Ok, we dragged it to the fence ( it was fenced off, so our cattle wouldn’t walse through the plantation ) then heaved it over the fence, just about killing ourselves, and then the journey downhill followed, dragging it behind us. Like always we got it home, through the door, be it a tight squeeze, and stood it once more in the bucket with water. The smell was wonderful. I decorated it and that evening it glowed in the light of the little lamps. We could never have real candles as it was too dangerous in that dry heat. So, when after N.Y.day I threw it out in the paddock and the cows once more came to eat its green needles, that was it. And the next year I bought this lovely real artificial tree!

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