One Tree, Two Saws, Three Stands, Four People

This year Alan decided to purchase a tree for his Mom's house from Weir Tree Farms, where we've been buying our trees for years. It's ultra convenient -- you choose the size and type of tree you want and they deliver it FedEx to your doorstep. It's a comparable price to Big John's, plus you get a fresher tree, and you benefit the economy of the North Woods. We typically get a 5 foot tree for our 50s ranch home. Mrs C. has 10' ceilings, so Alan ordered her an 8' tree and it arrived fine and was stored until our arrival on the 18th. So far, so good.

A quick look at the tree Sunday morning revealed that it would never fit into the old plastic stand at hand, so Alan, Jacques, Bandit and I headed over to Home Depot to pick one up. At the store, Alan was intrigued by a plastic stand that promised to "self adjust" by stepping on a lever. I had my doubts but held my tongue.

Back at the house, we convened for a yummy lunch of chicken, ribs, and salad with the whole gang (Mom, Suz, Henri, Trevor, and Pierce). Afterwards, the boys headed outside to take care of the tree. Sproing! Within about two minutes, the saw broke, clearly not the right tool for the job. Back to Home Depot. On their return, the tree was successfully sawed down -- excellent, progress being made. Now, time for the stand. Tree in, screws tightening and -- crack -- the plastic holding one screw shattered.....Sigh. You guess it, back to Home Depot for a metal stand. Did I mention that Home Depot was 25 minutes away?

Metal tree stand in hand, the boys were really determined to get this taken care of and Mrs. C and I retired to the kitchen to get out of their way. This stand was definitely an improvement over the plastic one but the tree was enormous -- and heavy. They managed to get the tree and stand in the house and, after some adjustments with magazines and all, it was more or less upright. Whether it was steady enough for government work was a question left for another day. We all could agree, though, that it was a magnificent tree!

Monday afternoon Alan and I decided to test the tree's steadiness -- which turned out to not exist. Simply touching the stand made the tree list to one side. And the stand appeared to be strangely bent -- the weight of the tree had simply warped it. It was clear the tree had to come back outside. Only problem? There was water in the stand. After a moment of reflection, I took a turkey baster and sucked out most of the water, then we pulled back the carpets and heaved the tree outside. Did I mention the tree was really heavy? However, our methodology resulted in relatively little water on the floor, so that was good.

After taking Mrs C to get her car from the shop, he headed over to M&A where Lisa had said we might get a heavy tree stand. Once there, owner Jimmy showed us two options -- one metal which looked like it would be easier to put up and one plastic that had a large reservoir but which didn't look as easy. We went for option one -- Santa's Solution, Too -- and also picked up a nice wreath for the garage. We were on our way!

Back the house, we attached the round stabilizing base to the tree with two wood screws. That round base was designed to fit exactly into the cylinder that houses the water. Support arms are inserted in four spots around the circumference, eyebolts threaded through the support arms, and then plastic pads affixed onto the eye bolt to distribute support and keep the bolts from drilling into the tree trunk. Sounds simple, right? Well, if you do this every day like Jimmy, I am sure it is. For we mere amateurs, it took several false attempts and a couple of capsizes to get it right. For next year, here is the approved method:

1. Affix round stabilizing base with wood screws.
2. With tree on side and elevated with a recycle bin, place reservoir over base and get base as flush as possible with the reservoir floor.
3. Insert support arms, rotating tree as needed to minimize the need to lop of tree limbs.
4. Once support arms are all in, loosely rotate eyebolts through and place green plastic pads on eyebolt ends.
5. Lift tree and place stand squarely on floor, so that the stabilizing base falls to reservoir floor evenly. While one person holds tree straight, screw in eyebolts to support the tree. Voila! A stable and straight tree!

And that is the story of One Tree, Two Saws, Three Stands, and Four People.