The end of the Christmas tree in The View from the Terrace

This year I finally decided to allow the boys to chop down the Christmas tree in our front garden. In the early 90s, when the children were small I decided to buy a Christmas tree with a root and plant it in the garden afterwards. I was trying to be a good environmentalist and to teach my children to respect nature. So one January we helped the children to plant it. I should have done more research regarding how tall the tree would grow.

It nearly didn’t make it. We had a really bad winter when it was small and it looked as though it was fading fast, but then it started to revitalise and after that there was no stopping it. After a few years we started to put Christmas lights on it over the festive season. Our house is on a hill overlooking a railway line and beyond that a main road and I thought it would be nice for the travellers to see.

I grew to love that tree. I loved to watch it’s branches swaying in the breeze. Birds nested in it. It was the one tree the cats didn’t like to climb because of the needles so we hung the bird feeders there. One year I took a photo of it covered in snow and made it into a Christmas card.

After about ten years it was very big and Cat started to complain that it was making her bedroom dark. She wanted me to trim it but I pointed out that you can’t trim a Christmas tree without ruining it’s shape. ‘I hate that tree.’ she would say and I would tease her and say, ‘Well you planted it.’

Over the last few years the boys have been nagging me to cut it down. They were concerned that it was too close to the house and also to the main sewer. I said if it started to cause trouble it would have to go. They said I shouldn’t wait until it was causing trouble, but I loved it.

Then late last summer I was in the garden hanging the washing and I finally realised they were right. We didn’t really have much of a garden any more, we had a tree. with a bit of grass around it. I had to trim the branches because they were reaching the washing line on the other side of the lawn. Tony said that soon it would take out the telephone lines and he was right, so I agreed.

Chris has 2 weeks holiday in August and said he would cut it down then. He arranged to do it the weekend we were at the flower show because he didn’t want me hanging out of the window shouting, ‘Be careful!’ all of the time. So before we left for Shrewsbury I said, ‘Goodbye’ to it.

I expected it to be all gone when we arrived home but the main trunk was still up, most of the branches had been removed and just the top was untouched. We both started to laugh as it looked so funny. It turned out that there was a nest in the top with one egg and an already hatched nestling in it. The boys had decided they had to wait until the birds had gone. The next day Tony climbed up but, though the nest was still there, it was empty. He found an egg broken at the bottom but no sign of the nestling. We read on the internet that mother birds often move their nestlings if they feel they are in danger. I do hope that is what happened. I didn’t realise that birds nested so late in the year.

So the next day Tony cut off the top of the tree, Chris found he couldn’t do it as it was too high, even though he knew he was safe in his harness, but Tony is fearless. Then Chris cut down the rest of the tree helped by Hubby.

Now it is all neatly sawn into pieces ready to be chopped for next winter. When the branches have been cleared away and the logs stacked in the back garden I am going to plant some shrubs. We have one of those lace top hydrangeas that Hubby has grown from a cutting and I bought a pretty white hardy fuschia a while back. I would also like some holly if there is room, so that we have our own at Christmas and there is colour in the garden in the winter.

What the boys don’t know is that I have 2 tiny saplings that self seeded next to a pot plant and in a hanging basket. So I still have something left from my beautiful tree and I can watch it grow all over again!