I put Christmas in the fridge. Wish me luck.

Christmas and I have had a complicated relationship for years. Then I saw a Facebook post about PEP Home's grow-your-own Christmas tree kit, and suddenly I was a child again. Well, a child with adult money and a spectacular history of murdering seedlings.

A little Christmas, minus the plastic

PEP Home, I absolutely LOVE this idea! A little tin, soil, seeds and the possibility of a tree I might one day decorate. No synthetic branches shedding bits of plastic from the cupboard in July. According to the Carbon Trust, an artificial tree needs seven to 20 years of reuse to compare favourably with buying a commercially grown one every year. Mine might not survive seven weeks, but at least I'm trying.

I wasn't always a Christmas sceptic. Growing up with Mom (Joey) and Ouma Maia, December meant church, family time and Gran cooking enough food to feed a small municipality (and that's putting it lightly...). Christmas wasn't about how many decorations we could squeeze into the house. I remember the people around me, the food, and being together.

I lost Ouma Maia when I was 20. Christmas hasn't been quite the same since, despite my attempts to find some of that childhood excitement again. Somehow, a ridiculous little tin of seeds managed to do what years of Christmas decorations couldn't.

My garden has reservations

I've recruited three friends for a Christmas tree challenge. We plant, compare progress and crown whoever has the tallest tree on December 25. A wonderful idea, except I am catastrophically bad at seeds. However, give me an established plant that has survived its difficult childhood, and we're in business.

Monica the hibiscus has survived bugs, numerous Sunlight-solution interventions, and is flowering again. Chandler and Joey, my agapanthus, are thriving. Morticia the Monstera spent her first year of life in a vase of water and rocks before deteriorating. I transplanted her into the garden, where she's becoming a proper MONSTERa.

My ‘spreading the greenery’ programme (AKA stolen cuttings, each appropriately named after the wine farm from whence it came, none of which shall be named for obvious reasons) has produced a happy collection of plants, including spekboom babies.

Even my orchid is alive! Her old flower stalks died after flowering, as orchids do, and she seems to be growing a new one (... or is it a dramatic new root - who knows??), although she's taking her sweet-ass time about it.

Why is my Christmas tree in the fridge?

The tin instructed me to sow the seeds in moist soil and refrigerate for three weeks. THREE WEEKS?! The soil looked like some unidentified substance with gold leaf in it. Naturally, for all my intelligence and perfectly good understanding of the word ‘moist’, I poured in enough water to establish a wetland.

I've since warned my fellow Christmas tree competitors to treat the soil like bread dough. If a recipe says eight cups of water, you don't chuck all eight in at once and hope for the best. A little at a time. Learn from my overenthusiasm, peeps. Apparently, excitement and sensible watering decisions do not go hand in hand.

After squishing out the excess and accepting that 'moist' does not mean 'swamp', I put the tin in the fridge. Apparently, water should be introduced gradually, not according to ancestral guidance to follow your heart.

Now we wait. Maybe I'll have a tiny tree by Christmas. Maybe my friends will win, and I'll be left with a festive tin of dirt. Either way, for the first time in a very long time, I'm excited about Christmas again.

I think Ouma Maia would have liked that.

𝑪𝘢𝘵𝑐𝒉 𝘆𝙤𝘂 𝒐𝘯 𝘁𝗵𝑒 𝙁𝗹𝘪𝑝𝒔𝑖𝐝𝗲!
Ⓛ🅘ⓩ