When I was growing up, a Christmas tree was routinely a family challenge. We put up our tree the day before Christmas. Several days beforehand, Mom, filled with wishful hopes for perfection, would send Dad out to bring home the pine. He would head down to the old Farmers' Market in his green International Harvester pick-up truck. I got to go with him several times, watching as he held up tree after tree. Try as he might, he somehow just couldn't spot one with well-balanced shape. So Mom would invariably end up lamenting, "This probably isn't our best tree this year." Ornaments and lights had to compensate.

When time came for me to pick out my own Christmas trees, I looked hard for just that perfectly shaped tree so as not to have to trim limbs or insert branches in gaps. When I married, I unexpectedly got a husband who is an expert Christmas -tree-picker-outer! He manages to find the almost perfect tree each year.

Just recently, the Christmas tree quest has taken a new turn: growing and harvesting my own. Several years ago, I bought a dozen bare-root, short-needle pine trees to plant in an old garden space. Having grown tired of lugging the hose to a vegetable garden on "the back 40," I thought a little tree farm would be a better option. It would be fun to grow my own Christmas trees and maybe one or two for the neighborhood kids. Six trees survived the years and flourished.

This was the year for the first harvest. My son and granddaughter arrived on a mild December Sunday to select this year's Christmas tree. After taking photos to commemorate the event, sawing the tree down and leveling the trunk, we counted the rings in the slice to determine when I had planted this tree. The ten rings told us the tree had been growing for six years before my granddaughter was born. This is by far the prettiest and fullest tree I have ever had - and the pine scent is divine.

It was immensely gratifying to cut my very own tree, one that I had planned for, planted and watched grow. If you have a spot in your backyard, you may want to try this, especially if you delight in long-term projects for the holidays.