17 Days to Go

Okay, been here in Thompson for about 4 months now and I'm still learning. And every now and again, I still get blown away by something . . .

Christmas trees. We are surrounded by them. For hundreds of miles in every direction there are spruce and pine trees of every flavour, shape and size. So, one would think that a Christmas tree is pretty easy to come by. I'd expect every parking lot and each mall would have a local service club hawking trees. Not so.

On Sunday, at the RCMP kids' Christmas party, I started asking when I would start to see trees for sale. The answer? Are you ready for it?

"Oh, you had to order one six weeks ago."

ORDER ONE?? Six weeks ago??? Are you freakin' kidding me? Where the hell do they come from?? Who is shipping them in, from where and, most importantly, WHY??? (One guy actually told me they are shipped in from Nova Scotia. While I have nothing against Nova Scotia trees . . . SERIOUSLY??? I think someone's yanking my chain on that one. But I do know that many, many folks ordered trees and that delivery does apparently take six weeks for them to arrive. Must find out more.)

I have so much to learn. Did I mention we are surrounded by hundreds of miles of bush in every direction?

I asked the obvious question, "Why don't people just head off to the bush and cut their own?"

Didn't get a reasonable answer beyond, "Well, if you do, just remember the shotgun and load slugs." Something about wolves and bears, blah, blah, blah.

So yesterday, shotgun and swede saw in hand, a buddy and I headed off into the bush.

Sure, it's a little Griswold, but I didn't load up the family in the Wagonqueen Family Truckster for the adventure. It was a little too cold for that. And I was warned about the local animal population and didn't want my kids to end up as hors d'oeuvres.

Apparently didn't have to worry about that last one. We saw some wolf tracks, but no wildlife dropped in to check out what we were up to.

Took us about 15 minutes to pick out two from the thousands and thousands and thousands of trees we saw in the first mile outside of town, cut 'em down, load 'em up and head home. And we weren't the only ones. I did see about six other shoppers out there searching for their free-range trees.

Now, free-range trees are not like the farm trees. They are not perfect. But they've lived a full, wonderful life, free from cages and constant trimming. They have not been force-fed Yuletide growth hormones (YGH) and they don't cost between $65 and $100. They are ready to fulfill their Christmas destiny and the relative sparseness of their branches makes it much easier to hang the ornaments and lights.

Yes, when it's -27, the trees are a little hard to cut, as they are frozen. But a little exercise ain't gonna kill me. At least it didn't yesterday.

And they are fresh. They haven't spent two weeks on a truck or in a lot somewhere, so they tend to last longer. In addition, this year's has some lovely, tiny, unopened pine cones which I know will start to make little popping sounds, and smell wonderful, once they begin to warm up in the house.

Anywhoo, that was yesterday. Today I must cut the eight-foot tree down to size and bring him inside. And then I must look into ordering snow for tobogganing. I hear it takes six weeks and is trucked in from BC. Apparently, what with the Olympics and all, there is a shortage in Canada this year. Order early.

17 days to go.

Happy Tuesday!

Oh, and here's Sonwun talking to Santa. He was very, very excited when the big guy arrived, but is still a little leery about face-to-face conversation. It was cute.