Search for the perfect Christmas tree

So here I am, saw in hand traipsing into the sunset looking for the perfect Christmas tree. It has to be straight and the needles, ironically, soft.

I still have scars from the brutal needles on last year's killer Christmas tree. Yes, last year we actually went to a local tree farm to buy the tree because it would be fresh, but we saw one standing by the fence that had "recently been cut." We assumed it had been cut in his field that past week only to be told after we paid for it that it had been cut in Pennsylvania in October. Little did we know that the trunk was bent like an old dog's leg, the needles were like raccoon teeth and, as I said yesterday, we finally had to tie it to the rafter to keep it from going over, again.

This year we went to a nearby Christmas tree farm in Southbury, Connecticut, that had just reopened and had been especially kind to us a few years ago. We remembered it had a hill full of fraser firs with those wonderful soft needles that take all the puncture pain out of hanging ornaments. I must admit, though, I was wondering if cutting down a young fir for Christmas was more "green" than buying a plastic artificial tree made with petroleum by-products. I'm sure someone is working on the carbon credit tradeoff between artificial and real Christmas trees.