Behind the posts, articles, conferences and social media, there’s a backstory. Have you kept up with the digital correspondence between Ranters Scott Beuerlein and Marianne Willburn?  You can start here, or go back and find the entire correspondence at Dear Gardener.

Cincinnati, Ohio 

December 18, 2024

Dear Marianne,

This letter actually started as a comment to your Christmas Tree post, but I  found myself getting so wordy that it became this letter. Hey, let’s call it a Christmas letter. One minus that cliched and obnoxious excess of Christmas spirit. I’ll explain.

I’ve lived it, you know, the live tree anecdote in your post and it was a life-changing moment. I think it’s the reason Michele and I struggle to deck the halls like you and others do. It was back in the 1980s, and, despite the example set by literally everyone we ever knew, we felt compelled to join that fringe element that buys a live tree for Christmas and then plants it out. 

You see, it was our first Christmas at our first house, and, flushed with a jailbreak of endorphins released by contact with microbes in our soil from our own piece of ground, we went full on pioneer mode. On a ¾ acre lot in suburbia, we did our best to live the kind of self-sustaining lifestyle civilization has long evolved past. And, to be clear, even though I said “we,” it was me.

I’ll admit it. I was crazy and Michele, never confrontational, went along with things to serve as a moderating influence that might prevent me from hurting myself or the world. It probably would have been better if she had put her foot down and stopped me from being me, but she didn’t. And we (I) spent a lot of time and energy learning lessons I could or should have bypassed.

Like our first Christmas tree. But there was just no way this guy who grew an enormous vegetable garden and a small orchard, who made wine, tapped maples, and subscribed to Organic Gardening was going to do anything other than buy a Christmas tree I could plant afterwards in the yard. So, I eventually found a nursery willing to dig a tree in the middle of winter and sell it to me at what was—I am now pretty certain—an inflated price.

First lesson for this college educated (then) office boy was discovering just how incredibly heavy a root ball is. My God, root balls suck! Especially cold, wet, muddy ones. They are nothing but dead weight with nothing to grip. You need the right tools to move them and none of those tools are any good inside a house.

I don’t draw. I’m not an artist. But I felt this letter needed illustrations I could not otherwise provide. So here, for the first time ever, is artwork from me. Merry Christmas, Marianne. This gift is truly one of a kind.

O’ what a classic Christmas evening we had when we brought our tree inside. Rockwell should have painted it. Hallmark should have filmed it. Soft focus. A small fire in the background. Michele in a long dress reading a book to the children, who are snug in warm pajamas. All of them with eggnog mustaches from full, frothy mugs.

And then here comes me dragging the tree across the floor on a raft of towels.

Dragging and cussing. Pausing to think of a better way. Coming up with nothing. More dragging. More cussing. The book put down. The kids crying. Michele ushering them to their room.

Me alone. The quiet from the rest of the house ringing like machinery in my ears. More dragging. More cussing. Me finding a bottle of cheap wine. Big gulps. The root ball breaking apart. Ruined towels. Scratched floor. The bottle finished. Weird-looking tree sitting bent over in a galvanized tub of water. Something that feels like a hernia. Hiding the empty bottle. Hiding the ruined towels. Opening a new one and pouring out two glasses. Calling out, “Okay, Honey, we can decorate it now.”

Lugging that tree back outside and planting it was just as dreamy. At least Michele and the kids were still staying with her parents. Wound up dropping the tree through ice into a frozen hole I had pre-dug. Backfilled by jamming frozen clods of clay around the ball the best I could. Peed on them to see if I could melt them any. It didn’t work and I regretted having asparagus for dinner the night before. Went inside with frostbitten hands, a very bad mood, and certain the tree would never live.

But the damned thing did. And, based on that pleasant surprise and having convinced myself that there was no way the experience was as bad as I remembered, we repeated the same mistake the next year.

As it turned out, my memory was dead on. I should have trusted it. The second year was every bit as apocalyptically bad as I remembered. So much so, that this time it left an indelible Christmas tree hangover and we never again considered a live Christmas tree. A few years of cut trees failed to overcome the bad memories. Artificial trees followed, but only because we felt we had to.

In recent years, we unfold a little one like an umbrella and put it on a little table by the bay window. It’s fine. Along with the lights and plastic pine roping we spread around the living room, it’s very festive. 

 

The tree. Artificial and modest. It gets the job done without becoming a job.

Thinking back on the live trees, sure, the difficulty of the work sucked, but I don’t think that was worst thing about it. The worst thing was the near certainty that all this hard work would not result in the success we so hoped for. Both times were exercises in compromises. This bad option versus that one. Okay tree choices for the yard but not such great selections for Christmas trees. Trees kept inside longer than they should have been but shorter than we would have liked. Planting the best I could at the wrong time of year.

All the same stuff you pointed out in your letter. Ultimately, they were feel-good endeavors that didn’t feel that great. And the astonishing fact that both trees actually survived didn’t make things much better. It just felt like dumb luck. Yet, of course, we were always sure to proudly point out our live Christmas trees to every guest that came to visit.

Until that one day when we moved. One of the trees was a Norway spruce. It succumbed to drought a few years after we left. The other was a white pine that eventually got cut down. Either the new owner didn’t honor and respect the fact that it was our first Christmas tree at our first house or, somehow, the message didn’t get passed down to new owners two, three, or four. 

I think there’s food for thought here for gardeners. We are too often seduced by “the story.” Whether the story is something that should make us feel good or the latest trend or the supposed responsibility of all gardeners to save the world one plant choice at a time, we sometimes feel tempted or pressured to stuff square pegs in round holes.

And while this can sometimes result in some success, and plenty of learning, it can also cause stress, frustration, and failure, and, ultimately, burning out, backing down, or bowing out.

Ironic understatement: Gardening and Christmas should be positive things we shouldn’t feel pressured to do at the highest level imaginable. And I truly think more better gardening would get done if we don’t put too much pressure on ourselves.

So, having arrived at such an incredible and insightful nugget, I’m done. Expelling such wisdom is exhausting. I’ll just finish with a Christmas wish for you and Michael. I hope you enjoy a very merry Christmas and that 2025 rolls out like a gardener and garden writer’s dream. 

Scott

PS-Recovery from my hip replacement is slow going. Daytime TV is everything it’s rumored to be.  Yesterday, I was scolded by my surgeon’s assistant for walking too much and for not using my walker! She was like 20 something. Her name was Luna. I got mad. Very angry. And I started to give her a piece of my mind. “Luna,” I shouted, “back in my day…” It was then that I heard myself and backed out of it. I apologized, and then slowly walkered my way out.