I’ve reached a level of adulthood I never saw coming.
I’m comparing the price of dead trees versus live trees.
Think about that. One option is a pile of dead trees cut into boards and nailed together. The other is… the exact same trees, just still alive.
And somehow that’s a perfectly normal purchasing decision.
You’d never hear someone say, “I was gonna get you a pet pig, but pork chops were cheaper.”
Yet here I am with a calculator trying to decide if I should buy a living forest or a dead one.
Then my brain wandered into the weeds.
Can I just wait until December 26 and buy 40 Christmas trees for 90% off? Yesterday they were worth $89. Today they’re basically yard waste. What happened? Santa cleared payroll and everyone lost faith in spruce?
Actually… hear me out.
Forget real trees.
Plastic Christmas trees.
Line the entire front of the property with them.
They’ll outlive me. No watering. No dropping needles. Every fourth one twinkles just enough to make people driving by wonder if they accidentally crossed into a Hallmark movie directed by a psychopath.
Costco has pallets of everything else. Somewhere there’s a buyer saying, “Nobody’s ever asked for the family-sized forest before.”
Maybe I should go to a tree farm and pretend I know what I’m looking at.
Walk up to one, grab the trunk, give it a serious shake and quietly say, “Now that’s good core strength.”
I have absolutely no idea what that means, but I guarantee another middle-aged guy will nod like I just quoted Aristotle.
So if anyone knows where I can buy 40 tall, skinny evergreens without selling a kidney, let me know.
Otherwise, if you drive through Bloomingdale next Christmas and see a perfectly straight row of twinkling plastic trees protecting a horse pasture… mind your business. I’m landscaping for eternity.
Dispatches like this one are being collected in What The F(arm): Sixty Dispatches from an Unqualified Ohio Farmer — $40, half of which turns straight into hay for the horses, the mini donkey, and the baby goats. The presses roll when 100 people pre-order.