ns, selling what they called “Real Christmas Trees.” Ah, but the weekends were so busy. So we punted and asked them to deliver us one, at great expense. And so it was, on Wednesday of this week, that we got the phone call…We had asked for a tree to be delivered? A 7-foot tall fur, brought to Paekakariki? Yes, that was us. Sorry. No tree, no delivery. Maybe next year.Crushed, we regrouped and decided we’d settle again for one of the floppy native pines. Now we had to find one. In the US, Christmas tree stands pop up like mushrooms after Thanksgiving. In New Zealand, they spring up by the side of the road for an hour as someone sells the 20 pines from his backyard, and then are gone forever. Last year we wandered endlessly searching for something, and the best one we found was as horrible a tree as I could have imagined. This year, we couldn’t find any at all!
So Keith directed us to a driveway in a local suburb. He claimed that we’d see a sign by the side of the road, “Christmas Trees, $20.” And so we did. We pulled up the drive, braved the WARNING GUARD DOG sign and rang the bell. A sour-looking fellow, tank top stretched ti
ght over belly, appeared on the other side of the fence. “All the good ones are gone!” he told us. “Only ugly trees left!”Because we found all of the trees generally ugly, this was either a nonsensical point or else a serious worry. But we followed him in anyway. An adventure.
He led us past his house, past the doghouse where we let the sleeping dog lie, and down a
path. Thick forest all around us, the clear cut for the new subdivision ahead showed what humans often consider progress. His lawn was punctuated by veggie gardens and a scattering of straggly pines, with a view of the subdivision on one side and cows in a pasture on the other. “All the good ones are gone,” he repeated in a thick Dutch accent, surprising for one who had been in this country nearly 50 years. “Maybe you find something that is not so bad.”
And so we wandered from tree to tree. He followed us with saw in hand, helpfully offering advice. “This one isn’t so ugly,” he’d say if we stopped at one he seemed to like. “At least it’s green,” he’d point out if we stopped at a seriously ugly one. Then more plaintively, “This is taking a long time, eh?” as we wandered around the floppy trees for the third time.
Perhaps it was the thick putrid scent of the cow manure and the festering stream. Or perhaps it was that four Americans were being led around by a Dutch man in shorts as they tried to pick their New Zealand Christmas tree in the summer heat. But finally we pointed to one (“at least it’s green”) and he took his saw and quickly cut it down (at least it’s fresh). We carried it up the hill, shoved it in the back of our car, and went out for Indian food at a strip mall. Ah, the pastoral life.
The tree, in addition to being truly ugly and almost entirely without branches (but it’s green and fresh), has one more appealing quality. Maybe because it is summer here, maybe because it grew in a meadow, it seems to be covered with enough pollen of something so that Michael is deathly allergic to it. But no matter. The windows open to the sea rain seem to have washed most of that away, and now that it’s decorated and we have come to understand the concept of “lipstick on a pig” in a whole new way, the tree brings a kind of unfamiliar Christmas sprit to the house. Friends try to come up with nice things to say about it after they get up from being doubled over in laughter (“it doesn’t interfere with the view of the sea” or “look how well your ornaments stand out”).
There are benefits to having a tree like this. This year we will not mourn when we have to take it down, will not weep when it becomes firewood. We don’t waste time gazing lovingly at its branches. There’s always a close-by source of amusement. And, my favourite, this tree provides the clear motivation to get ourselves to Graytown next year in early December and cut down a Canadian import. It is heartening to know that some things are not more beautiful in paradise.
Ps Thanks to all of you who wrote in response to my blog question last week. It is amazingly satisfying to hear from you and hear what you make of this whole enterprise. I feel you with me in a new way. Perhaps we can keep up more of a back and forth, eh? And craft this new life of mine—two years in now—together.
2 comments:
Michael and Jennifer,
*laughing* The only reason your tree is “ugly” is because we have a concept in our mind of what a Christmas tree “should” look like. Here’s the upside: 1) it gave you a family outing, 2) it provides a number of limbs to hang your favorite ornaments and decorations, 3) it serves as a focus of festivity (and humor) in your home, 4) it doesn’t look so ugly when the lights are turned way down low and there’s a fire in your fireplace, and 5) it ain’t bad compared to some: see http://ugly-christmas-trees.com/ Ho, Ho, Ho.
Even a good-looking well-shaped Christmas tree in New Zealand is an ornamental challenge. Readers have not yet been treated to Jennifer's improvisational Dance of the Floppy Christmas Tree, but watch this space. It is a moving evocation of floppy branches and scattered ornaments - very Martha Graham but with the bells off!
My sister-in-law, also North American, also living in Paekakariki, describes her tree this year as 'something from the Addams family.' Ironically, the ubiquitous NZ christmas tree is a Californian import: Radiata or Monterey pine. It only grows wild in a few small locations on the California coast (including Monterey) and islands off Mexico and yet, because it grows 3 or 4 times faster here, has become the backbone of the NZ forestry industry and in many other parts of the world. Maybe because there are so many of them, and they grow like weeds, we use them a Christmas and then toss them away. As a kid of 10 or so I remember taking my trolley and a hatchet and harvesting one from the waste land behind my primary school. We grow many fewer Douglas fir, but these are much stiffer and shorter-needled and more useful for holding ornaments. Thus they are the second most popular North American Christmas tree: http://forestry.about.com/cs/christmastrees1/a/top10_xmastree.htm
Why NZers do not opt for a tree that does not drop any ornament weighing more than 5 grams is a mystery. Why not use Douglas fir? Who knows, but they are not growing wild behind primary schools or on hillsides that local groups want to turn back into native forests.
The is another little wrinkle to this story. The Garvey Bergers planned a trip over the hill to Greytown to collect a 'proper' tree. Little Greytown is where Arbor Day was first celebrated in NZ in 1890. A half a dozen of the trees planted that day survive on the southern edges of town - a line of tall gnarled Radiata Pine.
Maybe next year Jennifer can head over to Greytown for a proper tree and then do the floppy dance at this historic site to propitiate the relevant gods.
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