I saw a few days ago that Gerrit's Greens was going to be closed this year. It was mostly because they need the trees to grow because they sections have been picked over during the past few seasons and maybe a little bit because of Covid. We've been coming here for years and Greg has told us that he needed his trees to grow so he might have to close his farm down for a year or so to let them grow. It seemed like the perfect year to do that was 2020. We were bummed because we liked coming out here, picking our trees and chatting with them for a while on what was happening in their life.
I try to get everyone motivated to go get trees. This year we were going to Sproufske's Tree Farm, the other tree farm in Rainier. I like to support people I know. I went to high school with Jonathan. I try to do it when we know there is a day on the weekend in early December when it isn't raining to go pick one. This year we found a day we could all do it and not get soaked. I talked Mom into going with us because she needed to get out of the house...even though she is not getting a tree. We take Grandma with us because her tree is her Christmas present from Ben and I. I've been doing this for at least a decade.
Ben and I got ready to go, jumped into the Escape, dropped off the recycle and went to pick up Grandma and Mom in Rainier. I made sure I had some rope to tie off our trees with. I found some at the Dollar Store the other day and threw it in the back. We picked up Grandma first and then Mom and headed up the hill towards Finian Road.
We pull into the property and find a parking spot. We walk over to the building and spotted Jonathan helping out some customers wrapping up their tree. I briefly chatted with him for a few minutes. Some about the tree choices and some about geocaching. We borrowed a saw and off we went to find a couple good and somewhat symmetrical Douglas Firs. We spend a little bit wandering through the west lot trees looking for the best one to put in our living room and Grandma did the same.
After about 30 minutes of walking around we found the two trees we wanted to bring home with us. We cut down Grandma's first and she and Mom walked it to the building to have Jonathan wrap it for them. Then we cut down ours and walked it over to have it wrapped.
There were some people in front of us so we had to wait in a line for a few minutes. I went and paid for the trees, then I talked to Jonathan for a few more minutes, thanked him and then met up with Mom, Grandma and Ben at the Escape to tie the trees onto the top. I am so glad I bought those small ropes. They came in super handy.
We took a few pictures of the sign near the entrance with everyone and saw that they got rid of their cache they placed here about five years ago. I don't know how long it was here nor when they got rid of it. I was going to have Mom and Ben find it but it had been archived.
Dad called me wondering if I wanted some holly from Grammie and Grandpa's house so we stopped by there for a few minutes to grab some.
We drove to Grandma's house to drop off her and her tree. We did go inside for a few minutes so we could help her trim the bottom limbs and place it in the tree stand. Her tree stand is a challenge. We did manage to get it in and secure. She thanked us and we drove over to Mom's house to drop her off and she wanted help figuring out how to finish her Christmas lights. She made us some sandwiches for lunch and we talked about how we could get everything plugged in so it all works on her timer.
After some creative unplugging and plugging in, we managed to figure out how all of the Christmas lights could work together with Mom's timer. She could actually turn on her Christmas lights with out a huge section missing because we couldn't figure out how to get them plugged in with her current scheme. She thanked us for helping her and we drove home so we could get our tree up and decorated.
Ben and I brought the tree in and got it into the stand and stable. We found out our tree had a bird's nest in it and we thought it was strange we didn't notice it until we got home. I wondered if having a bird's nest in our tree meant that we will receive luck over the next year or that we won a prize. Ben helped me get the Christmas decorations out of the garage and we started going through it. He helped me for a while putting up the lights and the garland.
Once the base layers of the tree were on, we went through our Christmas ornaments and I had Ben put his on while I went through mine and added mine to the tree. Every year we add a new ornament to our "years that we've been together" and this year we added our 7th ornament to our collection. We have been together for 7 years already!
We put the final touches on the tree and placed the skirt down below. Voila! We have a masterpiece!
Now to see what the new kitties will do with the tree. I was really hoping neither of them ate the tree. Fingers crossed!
I still needed to put some of the decorations up in the house, finish our Christmas cards and put the lights on the house but will have to wait later on this week when we had time. We made rice yuck for dinner, cleaned the cat room, did some online shopping and got my elf scene ready for the next day.
Next Adventure: Saying Goodbye to Ben's Grandma Bonnie
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