They say it’s an ill wind that blows no good and while Hurricane Ba’bag wreaked havoc with travel plans and caused massive amounts of damage to property, those trees that came down don’t have to be all bad news. Here’s one that became a Christmas tree.
Trees that lose their leaves in winter offer least resistance to high winds so it’s evergreens and conifers that are most likely to be blown down in the gales. This was a cedar tree, a large branch of which provided us with a real Christmas tree. The branch on its own wasn’t an ideal shape so a few more branches had to be stuck into the sand base and woven into place to give it enough substance for decorating.
An alternative, if you don’t have a lot of space, would be to forget the idea of a tree altogether and to simply create a massive flower arrangement from the smaller branches. There are plenty lying around just now but if you don’t find enough and you do have access to hollies and conifers of various kinds, think of it as pruning and be careful to leave a nicely shaped tree for the rest of the year.
Another option if you are short of space, is to consider an upside down tree. Perhaps not for the traditionalist, but love it, or hate it, the upside down tree saves space, has more room for placing presents at the base, allows decorations to hang freely, keeps delicate baubles out of reach of small children and pets – and what a conversation piece!
The upside down Christmas tree became popular amongst New York apartment dwellers because it frees up floor space with a smaller ‘footprint’. The ‘upside down tree’ actually has its roots (pardon the pun) in the Middle Ages, coming from the pagan tradition of spreading evergreen boughs across the floors, windows and hearth in order to keep evil spirits from invading the home. Again, this can be accomplished with ‘bunches’ of storm-broken branches.
