The Tree

This post is for the non-New Yorkers who read the Silas blog.

Yesterday we bought our Christmas tree. It's easy to get a tree here in NYC -- the vendors show up shortly after Thanksgiving, find an open stretch of sidewalk (no doubt there are licenses involved), and prop a few hundred trees against a fence or a wall or whatever is handy.

Within three blocks of our apartment there are four or five places to buy a tree; we decided to buy ours on Amsterdam Avenue between 98th and 99th. Like most tree vendors in the city, this particular operation is open for business twenty-four hours a day. Just in case you want to buy a Christmas tree at 3 a.m. (The hours are probably a function of the need to guard the merchandise.)



Silas was fascinated by the whole thing. (We didn't take him out of the stroller due to the extremely cold weather.)



Here's the sales guy affixing the tree stand to the base of our tree (note the bucolic bus stop in the background). Our tree is 53" high and cost $45. That includes the tree stand -- what a bargain.