Last year we tried a new spot for our Christmas tree and nestled it in the corner between two windows. After a few weeks the retired couple across the street commented, "We noticed you don't have a tree up this year." That's when we discovered that since they don't put up a tree, they've enjoyed ours vicariously the last several years when it was situated in front of the window. This year we put it back where it had been. It's fair and square, I thought, since I've admired the trees in their front yard each year when the snow falls, making them "picture perfect."

The Christmas cleanup is a good time to think about how we "do" Christmas and whether there's anything we'd like to do differently next year. Here are a few topics that I've been mulling over related to Christmas trees.

Real vs. artificial: My sense is that people fall into two distinct camps, the purists and the pragmatists. The purists insist on real trees for the smell, organic vs. synthetic, and the annual tradition of "choosing" the perfect tree. Pragmatists will extol the virtues of easy set-up, less mess, and cost savings over time. A colleague once told me that she'd finally questioned why she kept putting the ornaments on and taking them off her small artificial tree every year. In an "a-ha moment" she had discovered she could store the entire decorated tree in her closet and just pull it out every season, saving herself a lot of trouble. Personally, the experience of finding a tree, setting it up, going through ornaments, and even watering it, is an integral part of the season.

Industry and Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: The Christmas tree industry is important for both the U.S., Canada and China. The National Christmas Tree Association provides interesting statistics about the trends in tree-buying, the number of tree farms in the U.S. and how many people are employed in the industry. However, their own data doesn't support at least one of their statements, that "Christmas trees are grown in all 50 states and Canada." Their charts show Alaska at the bottom ranking, having no Christmas tree farms or trees harvested (in 2002 data).
While I can understand the economic importance of this Christmas tradition, I am also sensitive to how much of a carbon footprint it makes. What if the trees were just planted and left to flourish? Does it seem senseless to cut them down only to ship them all over the place so we can put them up for a few weeks and then dispose of them? Are there pesticides or other chemicals used to produce the 25-30 million real trees sold each year? What about the metals and potential toxins used in the making of artificial trees in China and how it affects factory workers and their environment, not to mention off-gassing in your own home?

Sharing: After my neighbors mentioned our tree last year, I wondered how much of the Christmas tree tradition is about sharing. After all, it's more fun to choose a tree when you have someone else's opinion. And decorating a tree with others, especially children, infuses the house with Christmas spirit. As I drive down the street, I notice how many people choose to put their trees in a window, thereby sharing the beauty of nature and colorful lights with all passersby.

Alternatives: While my neighbors and my family enjoy our tree this year, I will be thinking about alternatives for next year. More homemade ornaments, a potted live tree, or even finding out about organic trees. While there is much about this season that can seem wasteful, I see simplifying traditions as beneficial and more meaningful overall. It may not work for everyone (I try to imagine my colleague stringing cranberries and popcorn for example), but it's a start.

Taking out your "real" Christmas tree or put an artificial one back in storage is an opportune time to think about your family's traditions and how they relate to your values and priorities. Do you have a tradition that you simply cannot let go? Would you like to switch from one option to another, or have ways you make your holiday routines greener or more memorable for your family?

From a modern raindrop's perspective, the earth's surface can be divided into two types: slick and squishy. Or if you're an urban planner, impervious and pervious. Impervious surfaces include almost the entire city, from roofs to driveways. Pervious surfaces include kitchen sponges and the squishy floor of the primeval forest.

Here's what a raindrop experiences as it falls in downtown Seattle today:

Wheeee! SPLAT. Wheeee! Holy %&$#!, is that the ocean again? Wheee! SLURP. Ommmmmm.....

All the raindrops hit the ground and immediately make a run for the ocean. Some are slightly detained, spend some time in a puddle. But mostly, there's a surge following the rainfall that frequently overwhelms the stormwater systems, then slows to a trickle.



In Seattle, this means big problems. When there's a storm, the stormwater pipes aren't sized to handle the load. Rather than flood the streets, the city opens up the sewer lines to discharge the rain. This system, called Combined Sewage Overflow, means that after a storm, certain parks smell like an outhouse.

This has led the city to think about gardens differently. Gardening is no longer a hobby. It's going to save the city millions of dollars. That's because gardens, especially those kept in cover crop during the winter, diminish the runoff problem for cities. Soil improvements intended to help plants also improve the soil's capacity to detain water. The slowed water recharges the subsoil, feeds the aquifer, or passes into plant roots and escapes as water vapor through plant leaves. Our gardens can do this even more effectively if we consider how water passes over the garden surface.

This neighbor created an (ugly) berm, trapping water before it hits the street.



Imagine how attractive it could have been, had it been planted and maintained by this gardener:



Here in Seattle, we'll never recreate the primeval forest and gently tread soils that predated the city. But Seattle Public Utilities is trying to engineer little pockets of healthy soil that will absorb some of the runoff. Recently on my street, the city ripped out a piece of the roadway and replaced it with a pocket of highly engineered piece of landscaping.


The landscape “bulb” interrupts the little stream of water that flows down the side of the road on its way to the storm drain. There's one on each side of the street. I saw the excavation for these bulbs, they go several feet deep. In some ways, they're like French drains - a large volume of porous soil temporarily stores water. The water is then slowly allowed to trickle into the surrounding clay. The builders used a number of other little tricks to slow down the water: they built a little dam in the middle. Wetland plants bind the soil and turn some of the water into vapor. There's a flat overflow area like an estuary (remember estuaries?). If any water makes it through this series of obstacles, it passes through a rocky filter that says “where are you going with that dirt?” before the water finally escapes to the storm drain.



Recent lawsuits have given this kind of project a new importance in Seattle. Next week, I'll talk about what happens when Seattle takes a neighborhood with no functioning stormwater system and gives it a natural drainage system that approximates the primeval forest.

In a season where tropical storms are sending long, slow, drenching rains to my corner of the world, Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle seems particularly relevant. In the first chapter, she describes two very different attitudes toward rain: one, a cashier in the city who says it better not rain on the day she wants to wash her car, and another, a waitress in the country who hopes the rain will last a "good long" time. All of us have cursed the weather at some point, Kingsolver acknowledges, but if you're in touch with the land, you shrug off the inconvenience and bless the water that nourishes the soil where your food grows.

This is not exactly a gardening book, but it is a book almost entirely about gardens. It chronicles a year of transition for the Kingsolver family, who moves from Tucson to southern Appalachia as a result of a crisis of conscience. They were uneasy about the amount of resources and time spent trying to coax life out of the desert soil, and they wanted to see if they could live year-round on their summer property in the more fertile mid-Atlantic region. Between gathering wild morels, hosting a party with a triple-digit guest list, and pawning off bags of zucchini on unsuspecting neighbors, their adventures are hilarious and poignant. A spring of hard work and anticipation is followed by a summer of staggering plenty, a fall of bustling preparation and a winter of cozy comfort and a stocked larder.

Readers can learn from Kingsolver's mistakes and successes through her gorgeous, meaty prose, though she doesn't offer very specific how-to advice in terms of planning and execution; more than anything, however, this is a book that will inspire you to take joy in the daily drudgery of chores like weeding and watering, reconnected with your final goal of eating the healthy, wholesome food you helped raise.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle was a family effort: there are numerous lengthy sidebars written by Kingsolver's husband, Steven Hopp, a professor of environmental studies. They tend to concentrate on the political and economic ramifications of eating locally-grown food, so I found them an unwelcome interruption to Kingsolver's lush narrative, but after I had read the whole book, I returned to the sidebars and found them very informative. Each chapter ends with a few seasonal recipes, a sample weekly meal plan, and some thoughts by Camille Kingsolver, Barbara's daughter, who writes in a similarly engaging manner to her mother's. And it's Lily, Camille's little sister, whose hands are featured on the front cover; the beginnings of her lucrative chicken-egg business provide a sizable chunk of the story, too.

The book's title has the distinction of being both creative and fitting. The family's adventures with livestock and produce are well-detailed, certainly, but it is Kingsolver's clear belief that life itself is miraculous that makes for an uplifting reading experience. Cold is the heart that fails to leap when, in the final chapter, her efforts to breed turkeys the natural way (99.9% of turkeys are artificially inseminated) are rewarded with the sound of faint, high-pitched peeping from inside of a warm, trembling egg.