New member of the family after hunt for a green tree

OH Christmas tree, Oh Christmas tree. All this hanging around the house has meant that Christmas has come rather earlier in the Martin house than usual and the tree is already up. I love Christmas, but have always been reluctant to get into the festive spirit too early as there’s a limited time that I can listen to that dreadful Slade song, and to me the season involves over-eating and drinking heavily without guilt. As I spend all of the rest of the year trying to avoid doing either, stretching my festive bacchanalia beyond the 12 days of Christmas would seem over indulgent and slightly counter-productive. I am also sure when I was growing up that the Christmas Tree went up on Christmas Eve and came down on January 6. But, as we know, this year is like no other and our heads were turned towards tree matters by a relentless diet of “friends’” trees on social media, a more impressive than usual display of outside lights in our street, and the sheer fact that there’s not much else to do of an evening. The normally quite simple process of choosing a tree became more complicated this year when Mrs Martin revealed that she didn’t want a tree that had been ‘cut down’. We have the ‘Are we getting a real tree’ conversation every year, but in the past that’s had something to do with dropped needles and mess. Our friend Corona has changed all that. Both of us are looking after ourselves more, and doing our best to look after the world more too. Less meat, less petrol, less holidays (admittedly not by choice), shopping local, buying local, and supporting independents. Mrs Martin said that seeing last year’s tree lying dead in the garden made her feel sad, which made me feel guilty, especially as I cut all his limbs off and fed him into the wood chipper. So the decision was made. Millions of trees are cut down every year to go in our front rooms, and many millions of them are imported. We will not be buying any of them.

Going green on a Christmas tree purchase isn’t easy. There are chopped down trees for sale everywhere, and although there are a few schemes that will replant a tree for you, the nearest I could find was way down west. Secretly, I’ve always liked artificial trees. The really good ones look amazing so I took myself off last weekend to get one. On the way I wrestled with the conundrum that all the metal and plastic in a fake tree had to be worse than cutting down a real one and by the time I tracked down some artificial trees I had thoroughly gone off the idea. The thought of getting a tree out of a cupboard every year and plugging it in felt far too soul-less for me. Worse than artificial lawns, or plastic flowers. I gave up. For a couple of days we grinchingly discussed not getting one at all, what was the point, and blaming Corona for our lack of

Christmas spirit. Then thank goodness, Mrs Martin gripped the problem and decided to devote some time to it. That’s how we ended with Terry. He’s not very big and he’s not very strong. Even a tiny proportion of our tree decorations have left him looking a little droopy, but he has come to us with all of his roots intact and in his own pot. We have to water him and come January find somewhere else for him to live. Unfortunately the tree already has a name, and that is a sure sign he might not ever be allowed to move far from home. Let’s hope he doesn’t grow too big. We already have a rapidly growing young male in one of the rooms. I have another morning job. Administer spaniel drugs, feed spaniels, walk spaniels, water the tree. Happy days.