A new African tradition for me

I’ve been admiring bottle trees for a long time.  I can’t rightly say when I saw one for the first time, but it was years ago, and I was fascinated. Fairly recently I learned that they are an African trad ition to ward off evil spirits that were brought to the Southern US by slaves from West Africa.
 

Some of the images I found when I was looking up bottle trees

Not knowing about the evil spirits connotation, a couple of years ago, I decided I’d put a small collection of blue bottles that were collecting dust in my pantry to better use and arrange them on a corner fence post in the back yard, bottle tree-style.  I needed long nails.  I consulted my friendly Ace Hardware man who gave me a handful of different length nails to try. Straight home I came to hammer them in. I had so much trouble driving those suckers into that weathered, treated lumber.  Argh!  Besides, the nails were all too short and the pair that I did manage to drive in to some extent, had the bottles sort of hanging off them.  It would not do.  So I took the nails back and traded them for the longest nails they had: longer and fatter too.  Back home I traipsed. These wouldn’t go in at all.  My arm tingled all the way to the elbow with each smack of the hammer, and the hammer itself just ricocheted off the nail each time. I gave up and put a bottle on a bamboo post next to my temperamental hibiscus, and one “hung” on the corner of the fence.  That was that.  Until now.

This was my sorry attempt at a bottle tree
:(

I had an unusual South African wine
bottle on a bamboo stake

I don’t know what got into me but last week I googled "bottle trees".  There are dozens out there - images, stories, and those available for sale.  After perusing the web for a good while, I was bedeviled enough to just order one that very evening.  I was so excited, I was about to pop!  It came in 2 days. Susannah helped me put it up and bend the branches.  We had fun gathering all the bottles I had clustered at the bottom of a trellis in the garden and happily arranging them on the tree.  Now I just need to invite friends over, drink more wine {that comes in colorful or interesting bottles, of course} and fill up the empty branches. 

I’ll share a secret :: I feel mildly eccentric having a bottle tree in my yard.  But, hey! Could that be the real me coming out?

It was relatively easy to install.  See the little foot rest? Susannah hopped on it
like one hops on a shovel. It came with a tool to open out the "branches"

Love it!