{"id":2200,"date":"2008-01-12T19:32:13","date_gmt":"2008-01-13T01:32:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/gardenlog\/?p=2200"},"modified":"2019-12-25T11:43:42","modified_gmt":"2019-12-25T17:43:42","slug":"oh-christmas-tree","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/garden-essays\/oh-christmas-tree\/","title":{"rendered":"Oh, Christmas Tree"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dateline: January 12, 2008<\/h3>\n

As early as I could nudge AJM out of bed this morning to make me a cup of bracing coffee (decaf), I was off to Zilker Park for the moment I’ve been waiting for since Thanksgiving, Christmas tree mulch season. Although in the 40s when I began, the day warmed up to the 70s and this year quite a few people were shoveling mulch, into pickups, onto flat bed trailers, in plastic bags and cardboard boxes. Youngsters, middlers and elders, men, women and couples, with dogs and with kids–we were a convivial bunch. And the scent. Now<\/strong> I have the Christmas spirit.<\/p>\n

A young reporter from the Daily Texan came by to ask about recycling, what we use the mulch for, and whether we thought it was more ecologically sound to chop down Christmas trees and recycle them or buy artificial trees. “What do you do?” she asked me. “Well, this year I didn’t have a tree. But I’m glad all these people did and that Austin has a recycling program.” The local news had a cameraman out and I caught an unflattering shot of me from behind on this evening’s 6 o’clock news.<\/p>\n

To Austinites planning on getting mulch: wear gloves! People don’t always manage to remove those thin wire ornament hangers from every branch…or even every ornament. (If someone is missing a “Brian 1975” Hallmark baby ornament, I have it.) Also bring a pitch fork. The mulch packs down and it’s very difficult to dig it out with a shovel. Happy mulching!
\n<\/p>\n

Dateline: January 10, 2007<\/h3>\n

My biggest gardening Christmas present of the year comes the week after the last Christmas tree is dropped off at Zilker Park for recycling<\/a>. The City of Austin puts the trees through a chipper\/mulcher and then offers them up to Austin gardeners on a first come, first serve basis. Thank you, City of Austin! The city also picks Christmas trees up with the curbside recycling<\/a> but those go with the rest of the lawn and leaf waste to help produce Dillo Dirt.<\/p>\n

I use the wood chips on my paths and the green needles to help heat up my compost pile. Christmas tree mulch is too hot to put directly on plants; it needs to be composted first. AJM got me a pitch fork for Christmas and I had so much fun using it today. My yard smells like Christmas all over again.<\/p>\n


Not everyone in Texas drives a pickup. I can fit two leaf and lawn bags full of mulch in the passenger seat and three paper grocery sacks in the trunk. Maybe if I took the top off….<\/i><\/p>\n

Does your city have a Christmas tree recycling program?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"Christmas
Austinites take advantage of the City’s free Christmas tree mulch.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9],"tags":[55,115,320,436],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2200"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2200"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2200\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5830,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2200\/revisions\/5830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}