The Bottle Tree

Yes we installed the bottle tree on January 01. Harvested a dead cedar on our property and planted it behind the garden. The first location we wanted to place it, was a bust. I turned out when we regraded for the remodel the old back sidewalk concrete chunks were buried under the new grading and prevented me from digging any deeper than a foot. So we moved over 5-6 foot and I dug a 30 inch deep hole to set the tree into.

Here are two views of the new bottle tree which is around 11 foot tall. The tree is a little one-sided but I believe it gives it character. We still have to install a few more bottles to make it complete. I have more bottles they just need to be cleaned of the labeling. Meg wanted to let the weather remove the labels, she is still mad at me for taking down the bottles and cleaning them. I have one bottle that the remaining glue is burned onto the bottle and will not come off.

As many of you already know I have been recycling dumpster checking for blue bottles, this time of year seems great as lately I've found 1 or 2 bottles a visit.

The bottles are from Riesling, Vodka and Sherry bottles. I was given a gift of two bottles of Sake that I need to drink before using those bottles too. The light blue bottles are Vodka bottles.

 Here is our Helleborus niger that finally cleared of snow. This plant has looked pretty much like this during most of December. December in 2010 we had 27 days of colder than normal temps and 3 days that it dropped to 16 degrees. I think it was the third coldest December on record here!