Repotted Christmas

You have seen this tree before.

It first appeared in a photograph from Christmas 2011.

Somewhat to our surprise, and certainly to our pleasure, the little tree survived, despite its having rather sparse and poor roots. Here it is last October, when the appearance of such a tree so long before the Winter Solstice caused Orchid99 to comment "Oh not yet! But it is a real tree."

Yes, it is real, and was pressed into service again for Christmas 2012.

But the October photograph shows that it was already outgrowing its pot. We have had in mind a repotting operation, but it was quite hard to find a pot both large enough and reasonably lightweight, and of suitable appearance for hanging around outside for most of the year. This one came from a garden centre not far from here, but did not have drainage holes. That's nothing that a power drill cannot solve!

Now you see the outcome of a day when we could finally get into our garden, even though it was still pretty cold. The old pot is discarded just to the left of the new one and the orange washing-up bowl (invaluable for moving compost around). The tree definitely put on some growth, and we trimmed it back quite vigorously last year. Nevertheless, I fear that we might have to repeat the whole of this exercise not many years into the future, and then the assembly of tree and earth and pot will be too heavy and unwieldy to move, and too big for the house. Still, we'll try to keep going for the time being because it saves energy and money in December, and, most of all, because it's fun and seems more worthwhile rather than just putting the tree on a dump in January!