A Year in the Life

It’s easy to think that the Christmas Tree always looks as it does at the holidays – sturdy, symmetrical, straight.  But the year in the life of your tree is anything but static.

After a long, dormant winter, your tree begins to wake up – slowly at first, with the buds at the end of branches swelling as the days grow longer.

May approaches, and the warm days increase.  The buds finally break in April, May and June depending on the type of tree.  By the time the grass is ready to cut, the new shoots of your tree can be as long as a finger and growing fast.

At summer solstice approaches, your tree is a wild, shaggy thing – think of a plant with bedhead.  But by the end of July, the tree you know so well in December begins to take shape. The branches stiffen and the leader points straight to the sky.  With summer at its peak, shearing and pruning can begin.

Through the growing season all sorts of creatures will temporarily call your tree home.  Birds and paper wasps build homes in the limbs. Turkey’s will hunker down under the lowest branches.  Sometimes you find a visitor you’d least expect. 

Eventually, they all move on.  By the time the washboard skies of November set in, the trees have been sheared, the field grass has gone brittle and the land prepares for another winter.  Your tree is waiting for you.