Beginning late in the day on Friday, rain starting falling and continued through much of Saturday. Not particularly heavy, and temps were warm enough, barely, to prevent ice formation. But all the wet did delay our planned Christmas tree acquisition until today.

Fairly cold today, but dry, so there were no issues with a wet tree in the back seat. That’s how we carry it home, bottom of the trunk pointed toward to floor of the back seat, the thin top pointed out the opposite window, which is rolled down a bit. This year the top of the tree stuck out about a foot, and the window was rolled down about that much.

The modest NW suburban lot we patronized. Cash only.
I took that picture last year. This year I didn’t bother. But it looked almost exactly the same today, and the tree-buying was the same. Find a tree at or under what I wanted to spend, exchange a few words with the proprietors (a middle-aged couple), watch as the one of them, the man as it happened, cut a few inches off the bottom with a chain saw and then run the tree through the netting gizmo. I carried the netted tree to the car and loaded it myself.

After some re-arrangement of the debris in the living room, the 7-foot or so balsam now awaits decoration. We’ll get to it when Ann feels like helping. Doing most of it, actually.