A tree can be a moral dilemma and worthy of quite a bit of discussion. I am crowdsourcing thoughts.
For Christmas, should we:
a) Go down to the Christmas tree farm and pick a live, healthy tree which is happily sequestering CO2 in the sunshine, then ask a strapping young local lad gainfully employed at the farm to chainsaw the tree down , and then haul said tree carcasse home for a mere five weeks' decoration, watching it drop needles on the carpet and decompose, only to finally park its skeleton in a corner of the garden for months as a reminder of our shameful act, or else squeezing it into the green waste bin for the good folks at the council tip to dispose.
or
b) Get a plastic Christmas tree, made from either polyvinyl chloride (PVC) or polyethylene (PE), the former of which exudes surface and gaseous chlorine when heated as in a closed room on a scorching hot sommuers day, and the latter of which contains pthalates, chemicals which mimic the sex hormones testosterone and estrogen, and the long-term exposure effects of which are unknown but suspected to be quite negative. No, I don't like the smell of plastic trees.
or
c) Get a potted coniferate for about 4 times the price of a) or b), which would be knee-high for the first Christmas, and (working on the assumption that it does actually survive) a respectable Christmas tree size for the next 3 to 5 years, after that would require a permanent, towering spot in my otherwise-native-treed garden while we source a knee-high successor. I have seen the gardens of those who believe in live Christmas trees. They generally have a comically stepped row of old Christmas trees up behind the old shed. The people in the picture have clearly only been living there for 8 years. Another decade or two and they will have a windbreak.
or
d) Not get a Christmas tree. Bah. Humbug.
Your thoughts?
ETA
D has suggested a wire tree. I love it. Attractive, postmodern, pthalate-free and broadly speaking sustainable.
c) Get a potted coniferate for about 4 times the price of a) or b), which would be knee-high for the first Christmas, and (working on the assumption that it does actually survive) a respectable Christmas tree size for the next 3 to 5 years, after that would require a permanent, towering spot in my otherwise-native-treed garden while we source a knee-high successor. I have seen the gardens of those who believe in live Christmas trees. They generally have a comically stepped row of old Christmas trees up behind the old shed. The people in the picture have clearly only been living there for 8 years. Another decade or two and they will have a windbreak.
You can buy wollemi pines in pots these days. They're native, and they're lazarus taxons - they were only known as 2 million year old fossils until their discovery in nsw in 1995. They'd make a good Christmas tree, and would also suit your native garden. As a bonus, you'd be propogating a very endangered species.
ReplyDeleteOh that's an excellent option. Next year.
ReplyDeleteThis year, we finally decided to give a plum tree a summer prune and use a nicely shaped top branch as the Christmas tree. It was going to get cut back anyway this summer. It's not a traditional shape but the kids are good with it. I just have to keep it watered or the leaves droop and it looks very sad.