As November draws to a close, and it’s FINALLY appropriate to start with the decorating of houses and wearing of Santa hats and sending of cards, there is a holiday dilemma that’s cropped up in my house.
When he heck are we supposed to buy our Christmas Tree?
A little background: I have been a fake-tree person for many, many years. I think the last live tree my parents had was when I was about 6. And I’ve always had my modest, wee, artificial trees in the various apartments I’ve lived in.
But lo, the man of the house has decreed that no plastic coniferous-tree-like abomination shall ever sully his holiday abode. And I’m up for some actual pine smell (epsecially now that I have a vacuum that sucks), so I figured, what the heck – real tree it is!
Thing is, this man of the house, he’s not so good with that whole “memory” thing – specifically in regard to the passing of time – and says things like “oh I totally did that just recently” when this thing he’s referring to actually occurred 7 or 8 years ago. Then when he realizes he’s conjuring up ancient memories he sits, mouth agape, at this betrayal by father time. How could memories that feel so fresh be so far past?
Or he says “Oh this other thing is still so far away, we have AGES of time to plan” – far away being about 3 days. Then when he realizes this other thing is only 3 days away (instead of the weeks he swore he had), he freaks out and pulls some sort of all-nighter to make up for the days that cruel father time sneaked right out from under him with nary a how d’you do.
So you can understand that when he says “Oh, we can totally get a tree this weekend, I always get mine right around now – it totally won’t die by Christmas” I’m a bit skeptical.
So now I turn to you, gentle reader, to clue me in: Can I buy a live Christmas Tree this weekend and still have it glorious and green, and not a brown and droopy shell of its former self by the 25th? If not, when?
And if I can, where the heck in the Vancouver city limits do I find such a thing? Because the man, all he remembers is going out into the woods at the back of a farm and cutting one down “like it was yesterday.”
I believe Ikea sells live trees! Also, starting this weekend I’m pretty sure if you just drive around the outskirts of the city you’ll find parking lot teee sales set up all over the place.
Home Depot sells live trees, so does Rona. As for keeoing them alve, that’s a direct function of a) how well you remember to water it, and b) making a new cut – lop off about an inch from the bottom. And don’t keep the tree next to the fireplace or other heat source
Oh yeah, I forgot, usually different charities will have a tree sale as a fundraiser. They’re a bit mroe money, but you get the extra warm fuzzy feeling for free.
In my family we put our tree up on my step-dad’s birthday which is on the 6th and the tree lasts into the new year. You just have to make sure it has plenty of water – especially if you are going away. As for buying one in town, I noticed a tree “lot”at Fraser and 41st on my commute home – it’s for a charity but I can’t remember which one at the moment.
Some kind of community service group is selling trees starting on December 10 at King Ed & Oak St., in the schoolyard there. Since they’ve probably been doing that since insert-non-denominational-saviour-figure-here was a baby, I figure December 10 is probably the earliest time that it’s good to buy a tree.
there’s a church on …Granville I think, on the way out to richmond that has them every year.
i think it depends on how good you are about watering them, making that new fresh cut (buy a saw too) and not keeping them near things that will dry them out… also depends on your tolerance level for christmas things… do you really want a tree that will stay up for more than a month?
Two years ago I bought a potted fir tree from David Hunter’s Garden Shop at Broadway and Arbutus. I bring it inside for about 2 weeks at Christmas and it happily sits on the patio for the rest of the year.
I believe the lot across from the liquor store on Broadway and Maple has Christmas trees every year.
I bought a Christmas tree my first year in my condo, and it lasted, green and needle-y and yummy smelling until…
Easter.
Mostly I had no clue to what I was supposed to do with it after Christmas, so it stayed in the corner (with the decorations off, at least) until I finally got a little saw, a great big garbage bag, and furtively chopped it to bits and threw it in the dumpster one rainy April night.
Was it a magic tree, somehow staying alive despite my never watering it and the four months it lived in my house? Or was it because I got a Noble Pine (best smelling tree, in my opinion) and the needles just… stayed on better?
Who can say? I never repeated the experiment!
First of all let me just say that fake Christmas trees suck ass and should be abolished. That being said, we always put ours up around the 7-10th of December and leave it up till New Years Day and never have a problem, AS LONG AS YOU WATER IT!!! Enjoy the fresh pine smell!
As I bussed by Maple and Broadway today, I saw that the Christmas Tree lot was being constructed – should be finished in a couple of days.
It’s too early. Wait until the second week of December, I say.
And there are tree lots galore around. Some schools raise funds — my wife tells me that while Magee, where she teaches, is not doing it this year, Prince of Wales may very well.
I also recall seeing trees in a vacant lot on the west slope of Robson, if the vacant lots are still there.
Not all apartment buildings allow real trees due to the fire risk. Just a warning.
As I recall (like it was yesterday), our family put the tree up around the last day of school before the holidays. Can’t exactly remember when that is in the grand scheme of things, though.
But yeah, Neil used to wander off into the bush with a saw to chop it down. No idea where to buy them.
But if you’d like a dancing singing purple plastic tree-like monstrosity, I can send you one of those from Korea.
umm.. you’d be pretty entertaining to behold getting pissed off..
noting the ‘..cruel father time sneaked right out from under him with nary a how d’you do..’
anyhoo.. i sent you an email to your shaw account.. and i have yet! to receive a reply.. 🙂 important news lady! pls. rspnd. asap. kind regards your sincerly, much obliged, thanks. e. oh and merry ho ho