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jimsjournal

Tree hunting -- 12/03/11




Nancy and I went out to get our Christmas tree today.

For Christmas in 1978 and 1979 Nancy & I we would walk a couple of blocks to where tree sales were being held in the front yard of a house (by a boy scout troop, if I recall correctly). We would buy our tree and carry it the two blocks back to our apartment. By the next Christmas (1980) we had bought a house -- ah hah! and here is a photograph... Wow! Look at that long-haired hippy! (Hey, I was a perfectly respectable computer programmer -- a "programmer/analyst for administrative systems" at a university) And we aren't gray (except for a bit of gray in my beard)... but I was only 37 then and Nancy was 25.


At some point in the mid-1980s -- when Jeremy was a toddler -- we switched from buying pre-cut trees to going to Christmas tree farms. There was one where we went most years where you could pick out a tree in nice weather, a couple of months in advance, put a tag on it to reserve it, and then come back and cut it down sometime in December. The only problem was, if you had picked a particularly nice looking tree, there were other customers who would remove your tag and buy the tree you had picked out.

In recent years we have been getting our trees from a tree farm owned by The Farmer's Daughter. (During many of the first years we lived in Rhode Island, we bought our trees from the farmer's daughter's father... where they gave rides out to the tree farm on wagons pulled by their farm tractors.)


In recent years Jill and I have been the tree selectors -- but since she is back in Ottawa, Nancy and I went after our tree today. In the above picture I have cut down the tree and am fastening a numbered tag to it so that after one of their crew takes it back to the entry area and bails it up, we can identify our tree by the tag.

We brought it home and set it up in the living room but are not going to decorate it until tomorrow...



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