Poor Doug

In our fine city, we are used to dumping our Christmas trees on the front lawn near the street after the holidays, where the city would then come and pick them up, and take them to be composted.

However, because of budget cuts, this service was suspended for this Christmas. It will be reinstated in April. Not wanting to hold onto our tree for the next four months, we decided to take the tree to a composting center ourselves.

The Columbus Dispatch reported that there were nine locations accepting Christmas trees. Then, in true Dispatch style, it provided information about four of those nine locations. The other five, anybody?

I digress.

Connor and I took the decorations off of the tree on Tuesday. We carefully packed the ornaments away into three ornament boxes, one of which I subsequently dropped down the stairs while juggling too many things and a toddler, who used to be able to walk up and down stairs by himself, but recently refuses to do so. It appears that the only two ornaments that shattered were glass bulbs of no sentimental value. Thank goodness!

After I cleaned up the shards of broken glass from the basement carpet, Kevin came home from work and we prepared the tree for drop-off at the main city composting location. It had to be sawed in half because it was taller than five feet. Because it was so cold outside, I allowed this operation to take place in my living room. Oh the mess! I ended up cleaning the carpet with Kevin's shop vac. It took forever.

Back to the sawing, though. After attempting to saw the tree in half with a hack saw, Kevin re-thought his plan, and just took off the top of the tree so that it would be approximately five feet tall. (The top of the tree trunk was thinner than the middle, so it was easier to cut through.) The top of the tree went into our regular trash can (yes, this was not ideal), and the bottom five feet of tree was tied to the top of the SUV.

Kevin and I tied the tree to the top of the SUV as quickly as possible, because it was so freezing outside. We used twine. (Public Service Announcement: Don't use twine. Use nylon.)

The next morning, I loaded the boys into the tree-laden SUV, and we took off to take the Christmas tree to be turned into mulch. Connor was very excited to see this new place and to learn all about mulch. However, less than a mile from our house something happened.

The wind caught the tree, and the twine broke! The tree flew off the back of the SUV, landed in the middle of the road, bounced a few times, and then rolled off the road into a corn field!!

I'm so glad that no one else was on the road at the time.

I left the tree there. That may make me a bad person. Littering a corn field with a douglas fir. But, I was alone with two small children. I had no more twine. I had no nylon. And, it was cold.

Plus, I'm pretty sure I dodged a bullet. What if it had flown off on the freeway? What if there had been a car behind me? Thank goodness no one was hurt!

As I drove around town doing the rest of my errands yesterday, I noted a good half-dozen other trees littering the landscape around town, lying near the sides of other roads where other drivers lost them.

Connor is still talking about the lost tree, lying in a corn field, that didn't get mulched, all because the rope broke. But as I told Connor, "Sometimes that happens. It's okay."