Christmas tree

As I posted before, we decided to look into getting a live Christmas tree in a pot.

Sunday after church we decided to go to Calloway's plant nursery to look at theirs. By the time we got there, Jamie was asleep, and Karl wanted to stay in the car. So Maggie and I went in to look. She hadn't brought her coat, so ended up with my cape wrapped around her, and me shivering! We were inside at first, with the artificial trees, until we found someone to point us at the live-in-pots trees.

There were three sizes, tiny, a bit bigger, and one Italian stone pine that was up into "respectable". I was dithering over could we afford that one - when Maggie marched up to one of the tiny ones and picked it as her Christmas tree. Okay, the four-year-old has spoken, so be it. I can go with that. So we have an itsy-bitsy pine - I think the label said "Modell pine", although I have not been able to find any info on that, so maybe I'm mispelling it or something. It's barely taller than she is. That won't take a lot of decorating. I got the nice guy at the nursery to put it in the back of the van, paid for it and a bell-on-a-red-cord necklace for Maggie, and then we came home and I collapsed for a nap.

Karl sprayed it off with the hose yesterday, and it's in the garage, as you're supposed to gently acclimate it to warmer indoor temperatures. He also dug out the box from the garage with the Xmas stuff in it, so hopefully this afternoon I can get the energy to go through it. Maggie really wants to decorate the tree. I think we need to get a crate or something to set it up on to get it a *little* higher.

Yesterday evening we were over at fordprfct and kattelyn's, and she was setting up their tree. Maggie was fascinated, and had to tell everybody that SHE'd picked out our tree.

Our new tree, PSA

It has been repeatedly suggested to me today that perhaps our itsy bitsy tree is only a "Model pine".

Ha-ha.

To properly disprove this, I went out into the garage (it's COLD out there), and checked the label. I had indeed been mispelling it. It's not a Modell pine, it's a Mondell pine, Pinus eldarica.

A bit of research provided the following:

Mondell Pine - A hardy fast-growing pine for the dry regions of Zones 7 to 10. Need a fast growing evergreen for the hotter drier climates? These are the best! Hot dry climates, with poor soils, this is the one to plant.

Sounds like an excellent choice for here. It might even survive a summer that isn't very rainy, unlike poor Dooley the white oak tree.

Apparently it grows up to look like the picture on the right.

Lots of details here - http://hort.ufl.edu/trees/PINELDA.pdf Grows rapidly when young, upright growth habit, can reach 30-40 feet. We shall see. Most often grown in Texas. 3 inch long cones. Well, that'll be fun in a few years, Maggie's already been introduced to the idea of pine-cone birdfeeders.

There. Perfectly respectable tree, even if it is rather small at the moment.