pine fresh

what kind of tree has a hole in it...?

a few posts back i promised to reveal the “tree” that mr. grwhryrpltd was working on this weekend.  he had to take a work trip this week, so progress has been a bit delayed.  since it’s not done yet, and i know how much some of you really wanted to see it (ahem, kylie and maggie…), i hauled it into the garden just for fun.  here’s a view of the process:

plywood cutout

primed

painted

ready to hang, errr, stake

the only thing left to figure out is how to keep it upright.  you see, this little tree isn’t meant to hang from the rear-view mirror of a monster truck or lean against the side of the house – it’s going in the front yard.  where everyone can see it.  nothing like a little lawn ornament humor during the holidays to get the neighborhood talking… i found it very timely that roy blount, jr. has an editorial in the recent issue of garden & gun magazine on the very subject – weird things in your yard, that is:

we don’t believe in gnomes. we aren’t churchy enough for madonna in half a bathtub. my friend ken wells says that when he was growing up in louisiana, he had a monkey outside, living in a hollow television set. we’re not that ambitious.

mr. grwhryrpltd actually got the idea for his lawn ornament from the november ’09 issue of landscape architecture magazine.  it featured an article about the international garden festival at les jardins de metis.  during the ’08-’09 festival, the design team rita installed passe-moi un sapin rita, that provided visitors with styrofoam trees based on the car freshener variety to plant themselves.

image: louise tanguay, jardins de metis/reford gardens, 2008 (LAM, Nov 2009: 99)

their installation had 100 trees.  we only have one.  which is plenty, for now…

it’s beginning to smell a lot like christmas…