A Spindly Christmas Buds for Future in a Manhattan Apartment
Outside my office the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree stands 75 feet high and 35 feet wide. Some 20 blocks away in my West Side apartment, my own tree stands 10 1/2 inches high and maybe 2 inches wide.
The Rockefeller Center tree had been growing 61 years since Shirley Cenci’s father planted it in her front yard in Norwalk, Conn. My tree has been growing about eight weeks now and is just budding tentative arms along its pencil-thin trunk.
The Rockefeller tree has 20,000 lights festooned around its full and bountiful branches. I don’t see my tree bearing ornaments this year, not even tinsel for that matter, but it shows promise.
There is one larger difference between them, however. This is the last year for the Rockefeller Norway Spruce. It is the first Christmas for mine.
It’s in my studio apartment because the price of Christmas trees skyrocketed in Manhattan. Last year I only wanted a small tree, 3 feet tops. But the best price was $40. So I went without.
I thought of decorating one of my house plants, but somehow ornaments and lights on elephant ears jarred my traditional sensibilities. Instead, one evening I tuned in a local TV channel that plays Christmas songs and shows a decorated tree and a burning yule log. Then I watched “It’s a Wonderful Life,” and “Miracle on 34th Street.” That was my Manhattan Christmas.
Come New Year’s Eve I had no parched tree to carry down to the basement and no trail of dried needles to be swept up. The maid liked that.
But this summer I got a mailed offer of an infant Colorado Spruce for $1 from the National Arbor Day Foundation in Nebraska City, Neb. I snapped it up.
It arrived this fall with planting instructions, a spindly, helpless thing with only the hint of life. After soaking its roots for about 10 hours I put it in a pot, watered it and watched intently. But nothing happened.
Then ever so slowly it began to stir, like a baby yawning after a deep sleep.
No baby gets closer attention. I check its damp soil three times a day, fight off the urge to water more than once a week. I talk to it a little like I talked to my children when they were learning to walk.
It occupies a prime spot in my studio apartment with southern exposure and a controlled climate. That should give it a long growing season.
Christmas trees were always a part of my life. I even sold them as a kid in Detroit.
When the nation was digging out of the Depression, Dad would wait until Christmas Eve before going out and hunting up a bargain. He would buy extra branches, drill holes in the trunk, fill in the empty spaces. Mom would dig out the boxes of ornaments collected over a lot of Christmases, and we would spend the rest of Christmas Eve adorning.
This Christmas I will adorn the base of my tree with a few ornaments and maybe a string of lights along the bottom of the pot. It also gave me an idea. I have, for a pittance, ordered a red maple and a silver maple from the Arbor Day Foundation, for my two little grandsons. The seedlings should arrive in the spring and they can watch them grow as they do, the Mike and Matt trees.
And I have high hopes for Christmases to come. My tree, the instructions say, is destined to rise to a height of 75 feet. My apartment has eight-foot ceilings. But I will deal with that when the time comes.
