Forever and Evergreen

Last week found my old pal Angela and her husband Ian in town from NYC for a first time visit. They only stayed with us for two nights of their one week stay in Ireland, but the usual last minute mad dash for apartment cleanliness had to be done. We scraped the barnacles off the wall, aired the linen and rented a backhoe to unload all the crap in the spare room (which was then just shoved slapdash into our bedroom, which now resembles a junk heap with a mattress in the middle). The one thing that remained undone, and was immediately noticed upon A/I's arrival, was the Christmas tree.

I can't quite describe the level of inertia that has accompanied our lack of action on this front. At one point, Angela offered to help me take the Christmas tree down. I thanked her but explained it was 'down'. All the ornaments had been taken off and stored.

'No, I mean the tree, I'll help you take it apart and put it in the closet, or whatever.'

'The tree is real, it isn't artificial.'

'?,' was quickly followed by, 'It can't be, it feels like plastic. Why is it still green?'

'I don't know, Irish trees live forever?'

Ian chimed in at this point, 'Where's the water? It isn't sitting in water.'

'Leprechaun magic?'

The smell of fresh pine is still noticeable when you first enter the living room. So what's going on here? A) why didn't we take the damn thing down in January like normal people? and B) why is it still seemingly alive after all these many weeks? Zombie tree? Will it suck the sap out of us whilst we sleep?

I don't know the answers to these questions, but now that A/I have returned to NYC we still have no plan in place to dispose of our coniferous friend. He's being good enough not to drop needles everywhere, so why should we complain. The apartment smells of a forest glade and we have a bit of undead green to spruce the place up. Za-zing!