Pretty much every year I try to put together an interesting Christmas Tree for my own entertainment and the indulgence of my nostalgic tendencies. Last year I was in Connecticut, so I went out into the woods behind my brother's place and cut down a few hemlock branches and arranged them into the semblance of the Yuletide symbol.
This year, being home in San Francisco, I went to the Christmas Tree Lot, found them to be way overpriced, and left empty-handed but intending to return with the necessary thirty dollars for the smallest possible tree (without the stand, which would have been an additional twelve bucks.)
When I got home, before removing my boots, I decided to empty the compost bucket since it was full. So I went down the back stairs to the garbage area of our building, lifted up the lid to the big green compost bin, and what should I find fit snugly inside but a perfectly fine fresh Christmas Tree very much like those I had just been pricing at the corner of Market and Duboce.
I assumed at first that it must somehow be damaged or gravely flawed, but on removing it from the bin I saw it was unharmed and not even befouled by the cruddy container in which it had so recently been stuck. Why one of the other tenants in my building would have discarded a perfectly good Christmas Tree, I could only imagine.
Perhaps one roommate bought this tree and a second brought home another or better tree without consulting their friend first. It may have been a gift which the receiver was too polite to openly refuse. In any case, I was happy and somewhat astonished to have found it in this manner and not too proud to make use of it
Thin Mar Oo has been pilfering some of those old fashioned glass ornaments from the hotel where she works.
My sister sent me some papier mache pieces, an angel and two pears, that she made a couple of years ago, and the rest of the ornaments I either found or put together on my own (ribbons, origami and the like.)
It's the most traditional looking Christmas Tree I've had in many years and therefore fulfulls one of its central functions in an exemplary way.
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