oh Christmas tree

Some of you may remember that every December since we moved here we have gone up to the hills and slaughtered our own Christmas tree and the anguish I've felt at each slaying. (here, here, and here)

Well folks this year, we got our Christmas tree out of our own backyard. We had that blizzard in October that took down a bunch of trees. We’ve cleaned out the pines that came down, but there were a couple of junipers whose tops had blown out and were still, literally, hanging around.  I felt like ~ why waste a perfectly good, recently deceased, evergreen tree?  So M was a good sport and brought one of those in to humor me rather than going up into the hills to kill a tree that wasn’t dead yet as he would have preferred. 

M did say that the ‘cedar’, as he calls them, reminds him of his grandpa’s Christmas trees down on the ranch in southern Utah.  It smells really nice and I kind of like red peeling bark, the blue scaly needles, and blue grey berries for a change from the typical dark Doug Fir color.  It's quite a bit rounder and more open than a typical Christmas tree.  

There's plenty of room underneath it to lay down and really enjoy those glasses that make little glowing snowflakes or angels around each twinkle light!

Our lovely, quirky Christmas tree seems to be expanding as it is warming up in our house. This keeps us on our toes because its center of gravity is shifting and it has come crashing down a couple of times. Thankfully we switched to plastic ornaments years ago, but the water is a pain to clean up!  It also means we've had the fun of decorating and redecorating the tree each time!