I Think It Is Unjust To Deny A Child Their Right To Dig A Hole Motivelessly

Garden.

“So you plant your own garden and decorate your own soul, instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.” 

Jorge Luis Borges: “After a While.”

Team 7 (learning to focus chakra)

I’m all scratched up and I can still taste spray paint in my mouth and my husband almost fell out of a tree BUT THE GHOST SCULPTURES ARE FINISHED!

They’re finally finished and I’m so happy with them!!

Some progress shots:

In previous years I've tried uprooting small fir trees in my woods to use as Christmas trees, making sure to be gentle in the process and keep as much of their root system as I could, but when I replanted them in the woods later it just never worked. The trees didn't appreciate being treated like this, so last year I didn't even try replanting my Christmas tree and just fed it to the llamas (who did appreciate.)

I meant to do the same this year, and on my to-do list this week I had "cut a Christmas tree" and "get rid of 10m2 of broom plants" (this is on my to-do list in perpetuity. They grow so rampantly, if I didn't fight back there would be no pasture left.)

^ But then after I went and cut a bunch of horrible brooms I thought, well this is absurd, I'm going to kill a perfectly nice fir tree that I have no beef with, to have something green in my living-room for Christmas, when I could humiliate my plant nemesis by festooning its slain offspring with tinsel? I mean, shrubs are green. They fit the bill. I bet with a star on top they could pass for a Christmas tree.

At first I tried to cut a tall and large broom, then poke holes in its trunk with my drill to stick smaller broom branches in there like this: \o/ to give it a rough Christmas tree shape. It didn't work. Brooms as it turns out are extremely dense and fibrous and my drill didn't like drilling into them one bit.

So I lowered my expectations, and started gathering a big bouquet of younger brooms (the only positive aspect of broom invasiveness is that I have an infinite number of shrubs to experiment on. I cut a half dozen of them to try and drill holes into them and by the time I gave up, another two dozen had grown back in their place). I tied up my broom bouquet into something vaguely reminiscent of a fir and, I mean, with a star, it sort of looks the part?

I had to do the tying-up part several times, because the pretty and festive golden string I initially used was too weak. This bouquet of broom branches may look placid and easygoing in photographs, but when tied together tightly, it is determined to free itself.

But I managed to tame it using hay bale string. It didn't look happy with its fate, but I mean, it's a broom shrub. Its only ambition in life is to conquer as much pasture territory as possible and add it to its broom empire. It does not want to be a decorative plant in a living-room.

Take any historical figure who was mainly known as a ruthless conqueror and try to picture turning him into a Christmas tree. He won't look happy about it.

I ended up making two Christmas Brooms, one for the greenhouse and one for my living-room. The greenhouse one was originally meant for the living-room, but it was made up of particularly obstinate Pampe-like branches and I was worried one of my cats would poke it and the "tree" would suddenly break its chains in an explosion of vegetal triumph and traumatise the cat.

It may look like a peaceful Christmas Yew in the below pic, but don't underestimate its very strong desire to free itself from even the tough hay bale string, which forced me to use my garlands to tie it up some more, wrapping them around the "tree" less loosely and festively than usual. But I put my biggest star on top and that means it looks like a Christmas tree. A Christmas tree with a restraining order.

This tree is held together with tinsel, threats, and Christmas magic.

In the dark and from afar you really can't tell it's a bunch of unruly invasive shrubs tied together <3 And here's the much thinner and therefore less angry version in my living-room:

It was tilting to the left somewhat worryingly so I put a heavy stuffed hedgehog at the bottom to stabilise it, and a mountain goat at the top to dissuade it. All hands on deck. They both look somewhat petrified, like they are begging the faux-tree to remain a tree for the duration of the holidays...

Thus ends my Christmas Broom journey. It was a bit of a pain to set up but at least an innocent fir out there got to escape a grim fate (devoured by llamas), and a small gang of invasive shrubs get to be looked at with approval and joy for the first time in their life. It's a win-win.

Artober day 1: Minato's kids

Neil-verse goes brrrr

my unpopular opinion is that i hate tiktok because now people just publicly watch loud ass videos in public spaces with no regard for anyone else. 100% it was not this bad with youtube, it’s such a different thing with tiktok. put on headphones. you are grown.

Deer running from a flying squirrel as caught on a trail camera