A Griswold Christmas?

After putting together the post on live Christmas trees, we decided not to do it this year. We decided instead to thin out the trees in the front lawn that were starting to grow together. That job has been on our list for some time now anyway and we need a Christmas tree.

I hate cutting down any tree, but if we didn't take one or more of those trees out then the remaining trees would be misshaped and would likely not grow quite as fast due to the competition. The trees in these pictures were less than half the size they could be and were already growing into each other. The other trees we've planted along the road since we've been here were spaced much better. In the end removing a tree or two from this group of trees would look much better and would achieve the result of shielding us a bit from the road.

Now to the Griswold part of the story! Not wanting to waste the tree we were cutting down we decided to take the top of the tree and make it our Christmas tree this year. The particular tree we cut down was 26' tall, but it had two main trunks growing together, so the only place I could cut it and make it look "normal" is where the two trunks started forming which made the "Christmas tree" 20 feet tall!

While it wasn't quite like Christmas Vacation where they untied the tree and it broke out most of the windows in the house, getting the tree through the door was comical nonetheless and it does take up a lot of the main room in the house. The door was a little over 2 feet wide while the tree was over 10 feet wide. We brought it in base first and pulled a few limbs at a time through the door until it was all in. When we stood the tree upright, we realized the width of the base of the tree was going to take up about 1/4 of the living room! There wasn't much we could do at that point so we shoved it into a place where it took up the least space and the top wasn't touching the ceiling.

Here's the final product.

There's a few additional pictures as well. The tree was so big I couldn't get a good enough angle to take a picture of the whole thing at once. It makes this room in our house look much, much larger than it really is but you can certainly get an idea how it fits.

The remaining part of the trunk of the tree I'll also be reusing for a support on an extension to the woodshed. After cutting the top for the Christmas tree we were left with an 8.5 foot log that should be just about right for one of the lower supports on my long overdue woodshed extension.

While we didn't go as eco-friendly as using a live tree that could be replanted I think we made the most out of what we wanted to do anyway which could have wasted a tree. We made a few concessions to make that happen but I think that has to be part of living green...not doing what you want or what is easy just because you can.

Live Christmas trees

I've read a few articles and other blog posts recently about using live trees for Christmas. Being as its about that time of year again, I thought I'd talk a bit about our Christmas trees. When I say live trees I don't mean the kind they cut from the tree farm but the ones that can be replanted.


Since we moved in here almost 10 years ago we've been getting live Christmas trees. Our motive initially wasn't the environmental impact, but was instead the improvement of the look of the front lawn. The yard next to the road had been planted with white pine trees when the house was built by the original owners but had since been overrun by boxelder. The picture to the left shows the spindly white pines compared to the larger boxelders (and our late dog Data). We removed all the boxelder to be used as kindling for the wood stove and to allow the white pines to grow without competition.

The yard near the road still had several gaps where the pine trees had been smothered out by the boxelder (I assume). One of the early Christmases in the house we decided to buy a live tree that we could then plant in the front.

Here's a link with a few tips on using a living Christmas tree. A couple of things from personal experience to keep in mind if you decide to take a greener road and use a live tree.

First, if you have the opportunity, dig your hole to plant the tree well before Christmas. I made the mistake of waiting until New Year's day to plant to first one we had and the ground was frozen, making it very difficult to dig a hole, let alone one big enough for the root ball.



Second, be prepared for the overall size of the tree. Our first experience was an eye opener to the amount of work to get the tree in the house. A "normal" size Christmas Tree is about 2+ feet taller if you account for the root ball and the size and weight of the root ball is something to contend with. We had two large men plus my wife to man handle the tree into the house and that was after backing the truck almost right up to the back door! They are heavy!! Of course, you have the weight to contend with when you take it back out to plant it.


Lastly, as someone more knowledgeable about trees may tell you, sometimes the trees just won't make it. We've been using live trees now for about seven years and have only had one die and I think we are fortunate.

If you have a place to put a tree, or even better a need for trees like we had, then it makes perfect sense to use a live Christmas tree because its cost effective. If you don't quite have a place or a need but still want to respect the environment, then you may find a place like this one in Oregon that takes care of planting it after Christmas so you don't have to. Either way, plan appropriately and thanks for doing your share.

The picture to the right is what the tree lawn looks like after we removed the boxelders. It's a different angle than the picture above, but the two trees above are the two trees on the left of this photo.

Most of the trees to the right in this photo are the ones we've planted. The very first tree we planted was not a white pine, it is the darker one that is to the right of center in the picture, it's about 20 ft tall today. The other trees don't look quite as good yet, but they are growing well.

In case you need some help making your decision or you already have a cut tree and want to know what to do with it after Christmas, below are a few helpful links:

Earth 911 - Picking the greenest tree
Disposing of or recycling your tree

Starting small

I used to recycle back in college at Ohio University when it was convenient and it seemed like everybody recycled. We had a recycling bin that was picked up just like the garbage and they took a variety of materials. After graduation and starting my second job I sort of fell off the wagon. I've never been really excessive in my usage such as leaving my car running, leaving lights on, or littered but I've not gone out of my way to be eco-friendly since college either.

Being busy with life and work was always a convenient excuse not to worry too much about taking extra steps for the environment. We got started again almost by accident when I bought some new garbage cans because the other ones didn't have wheels and were getting beat up when we dragged them out to the road. I didn't know what to do with the old ones, so I sat them on the back porch and it became a convenient place to put aluminum cans. It didn't take long to divide the re-purposed garbage cans into aluminum and single stream so we could recycle more than aluminum cans for money.

I think treating cans and other recyclable material differently from other garbage helped establish a habit and mentality that over time helped us become a lot more eco-friendly and I suppose ultimately resulted in creating this blog. I'll talk more about our recycling process on a later post.

I doubt there will be too many people reading this who are new to living green but at the same time I think it is useful to see that the first priority is just get started by starting something small - for us it was recycling. There's a great number of changes we can make in our lives to help the environment and take care of the earth but you can't do it all at once so just pick something small, something you may already do sometimes such as at work and make it a habit for you and hopefully for your family. Your family's eco-friendliness will build from there.