One thing I have found that does make me feel good about doing something in the garden is composting the Christmas tree. After we take off the ornaments indoors, we move the tree outdoors to the grass and strip off the lights. This is better because then you can walk around the tree with more space than in a living room with a 7 foot tree and two couches in it.
So after the lights and ornaments are off the tree, I take it to the back of the yard where I have a big stuff mulch pile. Any big sticks, branches, dead plants, root balls, etc. go there. Every time I pull out the lawn mower, I mulch whatever has accumulated there. So I stand the tree up there and start hacking away branches with garden clippers. Once the Trunk is a bare stalk, Throw it on the firewood pile to dry out for a while. In a few months it will make some very sweet smelling firewood (that will not gum up a blade that tries to chop it into logs).
I'm unsure if it's carbon neutral to do so. Basically what I am doing is burying carbon that got sequestered in Canada. So my lawn mower emits fossil fuel into the atmosphere, which gets sequestered in the arboreal forests of Canada. Those same trees get chopped down t get turned into Christmas trees, Which I then chop up and sequester in my garden. Of course 10% of the gasoline is ethanol from Iowa, which in turn used fossil fuels to fertilize the corn crop (via the Haber Bosch process which basically turns coal into ammonia - sort of).
Other things I like to do in January:
- Trim the last of the rose seed pods
- Cut back the mint stalks
- Cut back the lavender flower stems
- Try my damndest to keep the compost bin above ambient temperature
- Try to figure out what to do with all the shredded paper that isn't being used by the pathetically under-active composter
As you can see, the first three things take about an afternoon...if you were in a wheelchair. Which makes the rest of January rather dull.
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