Christmas Tree!

My Blipfoto entry for last Sunday, when I showed the pumpkins at the garden centre, prompted me to take this photograph.

I mentioned on Sunday that this garden centre is where we often buy our Christmas tree, and that was certainly the case for Christmas 2011. The tree we took home still had some of its roots intact, but the nurseryman did not hold out much hope that we could keep the tree alive. The best bet, he said, was to cut the foliage right back, to perhaps a third of its original size, when the tree went to the garden.

In the event, we weren't as vicious as that, but we put the tree in a pot and waited to see what happened. Here is the result as of mid-October. There's been some more growth over the summer, and the tree seems to be alive. We are distinctly closer to Christmas 2012 than to Christmas 2011, so there's some hope that the tree can serve for another festive season. Fingers crossed, please! If the tree survives, we'll definitely have to find a bigger pot after Twelfth Night.

You might not know it, but you have seen this tree before. In my entry for Christmas Day 2011, I provided a link to a photograph of the tree with presents around it.

It's worth looking at the shadow of the tree in today's photograph. It's nearly twice as long as the tree is tall. And this photograph was taken only just after solar noon, 11:45 GMT at Greenwich today (Not what you expected? Story for another occasion... ), and almost exactly five minutes later in our garden (1.27098°W). The sun is only getting 29.1° above the horizon at noon. Christmas is indeed coming... But solar noon will be at 12:05 GMT here (phew!) on Christmas Day, and if the tree were still outside in the sun, the shadow would be four times as long as the height of the tree.

Finally for today, I thought that it might be a nice idea to provide a link to the web pages of the family-run garden centre that figures in my contributions for Sunday and today.