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Sharing New Year Cheer With Nature!
If you are one of the families that celebrated the Christmas season with a live tree here is a way to continue its usefulness. Keep it out of the landfill and recycle it into a holiday Treat Tree for the birds and squirrels!
Start with completely removing all the decorations from your holiday tree. Remove all of the lights and ornaments and take special care to remove any tinsel.
Take your tree outside. This can be a place in your yard or with permission, perhaps you can join your tree with others in a public place such as a school or church yard!
To get the tree to stand upright, place the base of the tree in a five-gallon bucket filled with pebbles or sand. If your weather permits, you could use water and allow the resulting ice to hold the tree upright. It is also possible to use an indoor tree stand or brace the tree against a fence or wall.
Now trim the tree with treats for the critters!
Here are some suggestions:
• Try making simple bird feeder decorations! A pine cone rolled in peanut butter and then in birdseed makes a tasty treat!
Directions for making easy, home-made feeder decorations my be found in the April 2008 issue of Spirit Living at: http://www.spiritliving.org/april2008/apr200804105tembandb_familyfun.html
• String popped corn, berries and raisins on heavy thread to use as edible garland.
• Take stale bread and using a cookie cutter make fancy shapes to hand on the tree.
• Drape unraveled yarn or wool roving on branch tips for the birds to use for nesting materials! (Wool roving which is used for spinning yarn and for felting may be purchased at Portland Fiber Gallery and Weaving Studio on Congress Street in Porland, Maine or on line
• Tie whole peanuts in their shell on the tree with yarn.
• Take oranges and tangerines and halve them. Poke a branch of the tree through them so that the juicy side faces outwards!
• Slice apples about a quarter of an inch thick. Poke a hole in the slice and tie a string through it so you can hang it on the branches.
Your tree can become a lovely snack bar for the resident birds and squirrels and if you choose to keep it filled with edible decorations for several months, it can be a way station for the migrating birds in Spring!
Once Summer beckons, your tree can be mulched for use in flower beds.
This is a great way to offer gratitude to the creatures that lift our spirits on those gloomy days of Winter!-- Editors.
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Let us know how you decorated your tree! editors@spiritliving.org.
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