The Search For A Tree

Good Saturday morning from our corner of Iowa where the temperatures remain in the 50's!  We have a few more days of this left before the bottom drops out and December weather becomes a reality.

Speaking of December, Joel and I have been on a quest to find a tree...an artificial tree.  One that will last for 30 more years.  What can I say, we are being optimistic about our endurance and a tree's!  We have searched a gently used place connected to our daughter's work place.  We have gone to Hobby Lobby, Fleet Farm, Target, Menard's, Wal-mart, and Shopko.  I think we are going to have to face the fact that we are going to be paying way too much money for a tree that smells like plastic and was made in China.  

There is a huge variety of trees made....different colors, sizes, shapes, and you can have one with lights or without.  Some have 400 lights, others 700.  The price ranges from $59 to $800.  I am not kidding you, an $800 tree should be able to plug itself in, decorate and un-decorate it's branches and put itself away, don't you think?  We saw one tree at Target that was supposed to look just like a Charlie Brown tree.  It succeeded.  I think it must be trendy to pay an enormous price for a tree with 6 stick like branches.  Seriously.

One store had more boxed trees than trees on display.  We need to see it, please!  Another store had the trees up on a high shelf so you had to stand back and stare up to see.  No touching I guess.  One store had a number of trees with a pathway to walk through them....fun!  Fun, but not on sale and way way to expensive.  All the stores had trees and all but one had trees on sale....so how can it be so hard?  I am getting suspicious......is it us?

Finding a tree has always been a journey for us.  When we purchased the real deal, it would take time to find just the right one for the right price.  When we lived in MN we once went out to a refuge and with permission cut down a tree.  It was a hike out there, and you had to be really good at guessing what the top 10 feet of the tree of a 40 foot tree would look like!  Joel would saw down the tree, then cut the top 10 feet or less off to take home.  The rest was taken care of by the refuge.  One of our refuge trees had to be tied to the wall because the trunk was so crooked!   After two years of that practice, a member of the congregation told us to come to their Christmas tree farm and pick out one to cut down.  Nice!  Years later when I was too sick to have one in the house, Joel would bring home one and put it on the back deck.  I loved looking at it all lit up from my resting place on the sofa.

We noticed in recent years that unless you paid a week's worth of wages for a tree, it was often packed with old needles, and who knows how many bugs.  Trimming branches from the trunk and bringing it in, and especially carrying it out?  I guess we have stepped into that season of our lives where that just seems like a whole lot of work.

Still, this search for the "right" artificial tree is taking such a long time...... I wonder if that Charlie brown trendy tree is such a bad idea?  I wonder if the one "on sale" for $199 is the one to grace our home?  Okay, okay, our early morning and late night quests for a tree are taking waaaaay too long. Make a decision or go without! 

I wonder if the grandkids would notice if we did not have one.......