Tree Preservation

I've just been chopping up the Xmas tree to put it in our wheelie bin - the 1st collection of the year is going to be on Tuesday.

Not a single needle had fallen.

Well, not until I got the big snippers out on it, anyway!

I suspect, this was partly due to the fact that the tree went up pretty late this year. (Hey! At least it went up, thanks to Grace & Harry), but partly due to the fact that we have, over the years, developed a super technique for putting up the tree, and keeping it alive once it's up.

Since living in my own house, and putting up my own tree, I must have bought every single tree stand available on the market - but now we have the simplest method in the world.

It starts with a wooden half barrel - just an ordinary outdoor plant pot - then it's lined with a couple of the super strong bin liners which are used for rubble. Into the bottom of this we sit a plastic bowl which just fits inside and which was a new addition to the ensemble after last year's little water incident.

We then stand the tree in the pot and wedge it in with cobbles. This allows the tree to stand up without being held, but still allows the trunk to be moved about a bit so we can get it straight. (This method was invented by me years ago when I didn't have Dan, Grace and Harry to help me get the tree up - only one pair of hands being the mother of invention - I would get the tree in the pot, lean it against a wall, and wedge half bricks in to make it stand up!)

Bearing in mind what can happen when you let the water out, we then came up with this year's pièce de résistance which was the addition of an empty Vimto bottle, upside down, through the cobbles and into the plastic bowl at the bottom which would allow water to be easily topped up in the system! This was Grace's idea!!!

The final phase is that we use scoops to pour gravel into the gaps between the cobbles, and this makes for a very securely held tree and a heavily weighted one which isn't likely to tilt over!

It was such a successful method of watering the tree that whilst we've dismantled it all, I've kept all the constituent parts for next year!