Fir from the madding crowd

We collected up some friends today and set off in search of a Christmas tree.

At the first tree farm we came to, the guy said sorry but he was all out of trees.  We could, in fact, see trees - however he was saving them for next year.  But he directed us up the hill and along a bit to another farm: "Tell 'em Earl sent you."

There were, thank goodness, a few trees left for sale at the Pretty Penny Tree Farm.  We tramped off into the field and inspected them.  Happily for indecisive us, there were few enough to choose from that picking one wasn't very hard.  Not that you pick a tree, of course - you saw it down.  The Man did the honours, and then the children kid-handled our Douglas Fir back to the car.  The proprietor, who has lived there for forty four years, cracked open some black walnuts for us to try and showed us photos of the farm's friendly wild coyote.

The tree seemed rather small on top of the car, but became much bigger inside our house.  Even so, with a spot of teamwork we had it decorated in no time.