Dogwood christmas tree

Look its me in the bauble!

We normally buy a real christmas tree, they are just so much nicer than fake ones and smell amazing.  Plus if you are going to go to all the hassle of decorating it, you might as well get a nice one.  However, we don't have anybody coming for christmas and real trees are expensive, shockingly messy and I do find taking the decorations on and off a bit of a bore.  I know, what a bah humbug.  Every January when Im waging battle with the hoover on the billion pine needles its left behind, I think maybe next year we won't have one, just have a little rest from all the christmas fun.  Well that year is this year.  Nobody was that fussed so we decided; no tree.
And we were happy, until a friend of the mother's told her how she had constructed herself a sudo-tree out of yellow dogwood branches that she had strung lights through and it was all very pretty.  The mother was rather taken with the idea of this and it so happens that we have a dogwood in the garden.  Ours is a far more christmas appropriate red rather than yellow, which can't, in my opinion, have looked that christmassy.

Please ignore all the other stuff in this photo, our living room is for living in, nobody
is under any illusions it is going to appear on a pinterest board any time soon or, between the covers of
Elle Decoration.  The point is the Dogwood is pretty, I think all white lights might be better but mine, alas, are coloured

Always up for a challenge I agreed to help attempt to make a dogwood christmas tree, although I actually ended up doing most of it.  So there I am, on a bitterly freezing cold day in December standing in the border wearing my gardening trousers which are far too big and therefore slip down to reveal an inch or two of flesh beneath my coat.  Literally freezing my posterior off.  We were looking for youngish stems as they remain bright red rather than the aged wood, and with good branching.  I managed to find about four good stems.  The mother tried to coerce me into giving the dogwood a prune at the same time but I was like its freezing, it can wait.

Moody bauble

We put the stems into a large jug that the mother's had for years and is quite substantial and so is unlikely to fall over, but just in case I also filled the jug up with pebbles to weigh it down and secure the branches in.  Or that was the theory but I found the branches had a mind of their own and flailed around until we ran some thread around the bottom of the stems tying them all together and adding a little stability to the mix.

Random giant nut

For decoration I kept it simple just attaching a red or gold bauble to the end of some of the branches and stringing lights up and down the branches.  I think the decoration needs to be kept simple, it seems a complete contradiction to use plain simple stems and adorn them with a thousand baubles and tinsel.  How a pair of giant nuts crept in I don't know but I guess they are vaguely appropriate?  We went for height as the branches are not dense and it doesn't take over that end of the room, but it does add a christmassy touch to the room with the fairy lights.  And no pine needles.  Taking this down should be a breeze, although the mother has plans to get a cutting off one of the stems for that friend with the yellow one, apparently she can see the appeal of red as well.