Amazing what I get done when the mountains are out

Combining my rugged individualism with my unwillingness to pay $17 to dispose of my Christmas tree, I took matters into my own hands yesterday and sawed the thing apart, limb by limb, so that it would fit in our "yard waste" collection bin (circled in the picture below).



This is the second year running that I have dismantled the tree in order to remove it from my apartment, and in a mildly pagan way, it is becoming one of my favorite parts of Christmas. First the exercise of wrestling the thing apart (this year's addition of a saw was extremely helpful), then the amazing smell, and finally the result of not having to feel guilty looking at an abandoned Christmas tree all alone in the cold trash heap -- abandoned branches are so much less sentimental somehow.

I started bottom-up, removing the limbs, then took it out of the stand to saw the trunk in thirds before sawing the branches off the top. Somehow, it all fit in the bin.

And now we're back to our regular living room, which looks so much bigger without the greenery: