Today, we went to our local independent plant nursery / garden centre and bought our Christmas tree.  It’s still in its net in the garden at the moment, in a bucket of water, so I haven’t got any photos – but buying our tree is one of the real lines in the sand for me, a marker that Christmas is really just around the corner.

We have a real, cut, British-grown tree.  I couldn’t do without a real tree, I’m afraid.  The smell of a real spruce tree in the house is so much part of my Christmas that it doesn’t ‘count’ without it!  Never mind that artificial trees just look… well, sorry, they’re naff.  Even the really expensive classy ones are just wrong, too symmetrical for a start, with none of the natural character and variability.

While I’d love to have a tree in a pot, I’ve never managed to keep one looking good for the next year, and I prefer the soft-needled non-drop varieties of tree that don’t seem to appreciate being grown that way.  I gather in some parts of the country you can ‘hire’ a tree in a pot that then gets looked after for you until next year, which sounds perfect, but doesn’t seem to be happening yet in our part of the world!

I’m very pleased with the tree we’ve got this year – it should be a nice height in our living room, reaching almost all the way to our (low!) ceiling, but there’s plenty of space between the branches for the baubles and decorations.  I don’t mind a tree which is a bit ‘bushy’ at the bottom, since a quick snip of the secateurs sorts out that problem and gives you a bonus supply of greenery for your other decorations!

Dave is always a bit confused about the appearance of a tree in the house – but takes it all on in the good spirits you’d expect from him!  He’s such a dude!

Sorry – today’s little blog post is a bit of a cop-out, I’m afraid.  I spent my ‘blogging’ time today re-jigging my ‘Handmade Christmas’ index page with more photos and some of the new Blog Advent posts, so do go and have a browse if you haven’t had a look recently!

I’m trying to write a post a day during Advent, so, please come along with me while I try to Blog Advent – the Country Skills Way – and forgive me if I don’t quite manage it!

Read more from the Country Skills blog >>