It's official. I've lost it.
It started innocently enough. I read a book about permaculture, which emphasizes reducing external inputs to and waste streams from your garden. Makes sense. Then I decided to grow lots of blueberries. But blueberries need acid soil, which I don't have. Normally you would continually amend the soil with peat moss and sulphur. But those are external inputs, and -- in the case of peat moss -- somewhat questionable ones ecologically.
So, what else to use to acidify my soil? Hmmm... pine needles? No pine trees on my property. But wait! What about all those Christmas trees dotting my neighborhood? They're like little pine trees, right? And they'll just get thrown out. Brilliant! It'll be kind of like respectfully using all the parts of the animal you eat -- only with a Christmas tree.
So, I asked a couple of neighbors for their used trees. They happily obliged, and I ended up with six chopped down trees in my backyard. Now, how to make mulch out of them? I don't have a chipper or a shredder or a chainsaw or a hedge trimmer. But I do have loppers.
And that, dear readers, is how I ended up spending countless hours butchering Christmas trees in my backyard. One by one, each tree is dragged across the yard and laid on a large tarp. I proceed to hack the tree to bits with my loppers. Then, when most of the greenery is gone, I drag the sad little naked trunk back across the yard and start all over again on the next tree.
To the casual observer, it might look like a Jewess getting her revenge (at last!) on the whole Christmas thing that has for so long tormented me and my people -- making us feel like outcasts, mocking us with the cheerful "Merry Christmas"s of obliviously sollipsistic gentiles, inducing feelings of guilty jealousy, driving us to join in the orgy of religiously motivated consumerism that is "the holidays" by elevating a previously minor holiday (Channukah) to the status of major shopping event.
But no. It was none of that. I have nothing against Christmas trees; I rather like them. It was just me, as usual, taking a nice idea a wee bit too far.
On the plus side, I will not be running out of mulch any time soon.
