o christmas tree

I'm a tree-killer. I'm going to just come out and say it. Worse yet, I am a murderer of a tree previously saved from doom. It's kind of like I went out on Black Friday and butchered the turkey pardoned by the White House on Thanksgiving. When everyone else in the neighborhood was tossing out the old Christmas trees, I was uprooting a perfectly unused, alive model and throwing it on the pile.

Here's how I got to be so heartless.

The previous owners, a couple we'll call the Phillips in honor of their love of screwing in hundreds of (mostly stripped) phillips screws all over the house, planted their Christmas tree, an Alberta spruce, six inches from the house, right next to the front door. It must have been last year or the year before. In their stunted, childlike universe, trees don't grow. They must not have seen many sights in the Pacific Northwest in their, oh, thirty-some-odd years of living here. Perhaps they thought that their exotic spruce bonsai would morph into one of those pom-pon tree sculptures you see outside of some brick modern houses.



And for the most part, they were right. In a year, it didn't grow. The tree lacked the sunlight and space it needed to grow, and was very unhappy crammed in next to the rhododendrons and the drain pipe. It had to go.

We had planned to use it as our Christmas tree this year, but the living room wasn't done and I just couldn't bear the idea of more open boxes and geegaws. Plus, when I checked it out, it was full of mud and spiders and who knows what else. It just wasn't worth the bother. Sure, I probably could have replanted it elsewhere in the yard. Simply put, I don't want another conifer in my yard, much less a shade tree, to ooze sap and spread its acidic pine needles into the already acidic soil.

It was relatively easy to uproot and pull out. I'm using the area for all my tulips and daffodils, which may or may not come up this year since I had such a late start. I finally got them in the ground yesterday, and planted my dahlias alongside the house, as well. Anything is better than that tree.

The next question is what should I do with my lovely brick planter? Right now, there are crocuses (it seems) and the herbs I planted last fall so I wouldn't have to look at the hideous real estate agent-interred mums. (Yes, folks, I also murdered six mums.) I think that in the future I'll use it for bulbs, but this year I may have to resort to annuals.



For anyone keeping track of such things, you can see the Phillips Family Memorial Brick, the one used to hold together their toilet, on the upper left corner of the brick planter. One must maintain a sense of humor about such things. Maybe I should have saved some spruce sap. Oh well.