My mom and her trendy Xmas trees.

 
She talked to the trees.
Once we moved east to our new and bigger house in L A County my mom thought it trendy to buy a fake Christmas tree.  One wants to follow the trends of course.  My mom was a devoted trend follower.  Getting most of her inspiration from the Sears and Roebuck catalogue.  Never mind just a few short years back she and my dad lived on a forty-acer parched farm in south central Oklahoma just north of the Red River.  The trends back then was to switch from wood burning stoves to charcoal.  Switch from milking a cow to going into town and buy milk in a quart glass bottle at Mohdells cash and carry.  My mom wanted to keep up with the Jones’ who lived just a short mile south down the gravel county road.  But certainly not the Jones’ who lived near the Baptist cemetery.
But anyway her first fake tree purchase was an all-white plastic with little green markings giving the impression of being either a flocked evergreen or a white plastic tree with little green markings.  But when fully decorated It looked like a fully adorned and lighted plastic tree.
Then her trend following went up a notch.  She found an aluminum tree in the shape of a Christmas tree but with funny looking aluminum mushroom shaped on the ends of each fake branch.  To me it looked like an exploded box of aluminum foil.  However, it really did light up and reflecting all the color lights.  Looking like a Las Vegas hotel marquee.  .  But after others who bought aluminum trees being shocked when either faulty lights were conducted by the metal foil or when people walking on nylon carpet wearing rubber soled shoes and touching the tree would receive a serious electric jolt.  Ouch!  Safety experts suggested to toss the aluminum tree in the lake for a fish habitat.
Then fake tree manufacturing went up a notch.  Looking more and more like real trees.  I’m not sure the next tree my mom bought was suppose to be a pine or a spruce.  It had long green needles about four or five inches long.  I must admit it did look real.  But the needles looked much longer than your basic forested tree.  The needles looked more like green broom straw.  But with that kind of dense needlidge with a dark forest green it would be easy to over decorate.  If you know what I mean.
But during the off season all this fakery was kept in boxes in the entry closet.  Then come the next Christmas her daughters would pull out all the boxes and start all over again.  Merry Christmas.