Making a wreath

This was the scene at my dining room table this afternoon, as I worked to organize the pile of multiflora rose hips I'd gathered into a wreath. Gloves were important, and nippers. And lots of twisty wire. It was slow, mindful work. The good kind.

The rose hips were gleaned from a nearby river access and fishing area, called Rock Bottom. I'd visited there yesterday, searching for sticks to complete my bird mobile. Sticks I found, and great hedges of multiflora rose. I spent much of my childhood in love with multiflora rose-- it brightened our barnyards with its cheerful white flowers in early summer, carried rain droplets and dew drops aloft on its graceful arms, and held little sprays of red berries against the snow all winter. Conveniently (for me, at least) it's a non-native species. Free to harvest it with abandon, I returned to Rock Bottom today with gloves and nippers, and carted off a big bag.

Herein lies the intersection of the things I love best about crafting. There's the DIY aspect, and the freeing feeling of doing something for yourself, rather than paying someone else to do them for you. Check. There's the thrifty aspect: total outlay for this project, about $1.75 for the wire wreath form. Best of all, there's the ecology aspect. I used the land without diminishing it, and maybe even by bettering it. Multiflora rose has no business growing here, it's an alien species from a different habitat.

So, Rock Bottom gained some breathing room, some freedom from imposing invader species. And me? I gained a wreath.