I finally got the last few layers of the pine tree completed.
I got the last few layers extruded out and was able to adjust them so that they have a bit better thickness than previously. Oh and the spacing. I got that worked out. It took quite a bit of adjusting things. Mostly I spent a lot of time selecting the entire set of edges that would make a loop, or full circle, and moving them up or down along the z axis or scaling them up or down along the xy axis. If I moved the loop up I had to scale it smaller and if I 
moved it down I had to scale it larger. And the closer in under the upper layers that I went the more challenging it was to get it right. I couldn’t make too big a move up without first scaling the loop down. Otherwise it might poke out of the other geometry.
I also added the trunk of the tree. I had to extend all that back down. I had moved it all so that it was up in the tree. At some point when I did that the center point on the very bottom got way off center of everything else. I had to re-center it so that things would look right.
As I was finishing up and thinking about starting the next step I was looking at one of the wire frame view ports and thought it looked cool to see the tree in wire frame so I took a screenshot for you.
The next item to go in is the Cactus.
This object, I know I want to start using a box. A rectangular box, but a box. Which I suppose is a little weird because I could use a cylinder pretty much, just as effectively. And I may end up making one that way to compare them. For now though, I have started the cactus using a tall box. I added some edge loops in the middle area where I knew I wanted to arms to branch off. I did this so I would be able to extrude a face off from the main trunk to add more geometry and create the arms. I had to make the extrusion and then I added another edge loop or two and then I rotated the face/polygon at the very end so it angled up a little. Then I had to move it up a bit. I did that in small increments a time or two and then added another edge loop and did the smale rotate and move procedure again.
In addition to the rotate and move bits, once I got the arm built I found the arm was a bit squished or deflated on one side so I had to do some scaling and even moving of actual edges to fluff out the arm.
I pretty much followed the same prodcedure for the smaller arm. Lots of move a bit, rotate a bit, move a bit, rotate a bit and add an edge loop here or there. Oh, and of course a bit of scaling and edge moving.
A look at things with turbosmooth showed that I needed a couple of edge loops on the main trunk. One edge loop towards the top to round it up a bit more and one really close to the bottom to make it more cylindrical at the bottom. 
Without the turbosmooth modifier applied to the tree and the cactus they definitely are very boxy even with the tree starting from a cone.
It is tempting to use them this way, all rough and angular and boxy and such. I might do that by the time I get done, though that wasn’t my original vision.
For now, here is what they both look like with the turbosmooth modifier applied.
