I have been waiting for my Yarn Tree to arrive via US Mail. I put it in said US mail over a week ago. Nine days ago to be exact. I do hope I see it again. We’re talking 100s of hours of manual labor in this box, not only by me, but by my mother, my niece, Austin & Jake, Dan, my brother-in-law and a few assorted others. Some even learned to knit for the event. Oh please USPS, have mercy.

Right now, during the day, I’m making a sweater tree. It’s a big one. My sister and I had a good time picking out sweaters for the piece. On the sweater field trip we also got a euphonium (it was just waiting for us at Goodwill) for $5.99. I thought the horn tree would be the biggest expense, but it turned out to cost almost nothing. Way to go, budget.

Here’s a picture of the pigeon I’m making. It will live at the top of the sweater tree. It’s entirely made of a Tyvek FedEx envelope (plus thread and stuffing). My dad’s going to help me engineer a zipline to attach it to, so that the pigeon can fly across the room with messages in his alligator clip claws.

Sometimes in my hometown of NYC I feel like a bit of a freak when I describe my current project to people at a party–yeah, I’m making this giant, portable Central Park made out of yarn, ladders, tubas and roll-out grass, see? But the discomfort of talking about my folly at a NY cocktail party ain’t nothin’ to the record scratch of fielding questions from the nice people at Mesa Home Depot who are trying desperately to give me good customer service.

Sample conversation:

DEPOT GUY (wandering by me and my dad in the aisle): I see you’re looking for copper tubing–I’d love to help you in any way I can…what are you working on?

ME AND MY DAD: Stunned silence

MY DAD: We-ell, it’s a pretty strange project.

DEPOT GUY (brightly): Oh, I’ve worked on all kinds of stuff, really. What are you working on?

ME: We’re building a tree out of tubas and other horns and we need this copper tubing to go up from the horn base and hang light bulbs losely from wire like fruit, so that when the horns are blown the light bulbs go on.

DEPOT GUY: _____________________

MY DAD (Whistling like he doesn’t know me): La, la, la.

DEPOT GUY: OK, well, I’ll just let you get back to that.

After the Home Depot, we went to pick up two delightfully banged up tubas ($40 for both!) from a guy who saw my ad on Craigslist. I love Craigslist.

Today I am going to begin work on building the bulk of my installation. I have recruited my dad to help: he’s engineering the structures of the trees and buildings. We are going to convert my sister’s 1st grade classroom in Phoenix into a Central Park workshop. I’m excited to use tools for a few weeks. I love to build.

The one piece I’ve been working on (at home) is stuffed into a box and put into the care of the USPO for it’s journey from NYC to AZ:

The whole thing fit rather nicely into a Fresh Direct box, minus cupcakes and ladder, of course.

Next thing we work on is the Tea Tree. Oh joy–the tree will make you tea! I can’t wait to see it.

I’m also looking forward to the indoor Great Lawn. I’ve always wanted to roll sod out on a floor. I’m drooling just thinking about it.

I’ve lived most my life (with the exception of the first few years) in non-suburban settings. First, redwood forest, then NYC. Because of this I have mostly been left out of superstore shopping of any kind. So, I was overjoyed to walk around Home Depot in Mission Viejo (where I’m staying for a few days) to do some research for my impending installation build. THEY HAVE EVERYTHING! YOU CAN BUY IT ALL AND PUT IT IN YOUR CAR AND DRIVE IT HOME! Brilliant.

Do all people feel the same surge of joy that I do when they walk into the Depot? I hope so. It’s a lovely rush.

I know some will say that hey, you have a Depot in Manhattan. Yeah, it’s just not the same thing. It’s small, understocked, and the Depot People won’t tell you where anything is.

My friend and webmaster Ray pointed out to me that there’s not a hell of a lot of explanation about this movie I’m up to my eyeballs in editing right now. It’s on the site, but there’s nothing about it, see?

OK. Here goes:

This is a movie about magical people who live in Central Park. These people keep nature from taking over–they kind of allow for NYC to exist. There used to be a lot of them, but now there are just a handful. They operate below the radar, but are well known (unofficially) to the Parks Department.

Our movie is from the perspective of one 16 year old member of their ranks, Verna:

Verna is pretty much a normal 16 year old, except that she has very little contact with the world outside of Central Park, except for those regulars whom she’s befriended. She is in love with this gardener (actually a summer landscaping intern), Mike:

Verna is forbidden by the Grandmother to have liaisons with people who are not Park People. Mike does not qualify because he doesn’t live in the park.

Here is the Grandmother:

She’s a tough one. In fact, she’s one of the reasons that there are so few of the Park People left–she regularly kicks people out for not following rules. One such person was Verna’s aunt who left well before Verna was born. Unknown to Verna is the fact that this aunt had a daughter who is drawn to the park, but knows nothing about her inheritance. She and Verna strike up an acquaintance.

This is Ruth:

There are a few other characters who come in and out. I’ll tell you about them at another time…

It’s pretty lame of me to think that nothing is blooming in Arizona right now. Of course the desert plants are all going to flower at some point–why not now? Here’s proof, courtesy of Mark and Chanelle.

Chanelle pointed me to her flikr site which has plenty of pix of blooming AZ. Great pix on this site.

photo by iamchanelle

This is a Palo Verde. I have seen them, but never in bloom. This is a very cool tree that looks like it was designed by Dr. Seuss–something I appreciate very much.

And Mark kindly set me straight with a few photos…
The Saguaro, of course, has beeyootiful flowers.

Ironwood flowers. (Olneya Testosa).

And Arizona Thistles (Cirsium arizonicum) which Mark says is the hip hangout for hummingbirds these days.

I realize I already had a weekly bloom this week, but I’m going to Arizona on Tuesday (for almost a month), and I don’t know if there’s anything blooming there at this time of year. If I were a flowering plant I wouldn’t want to bloom when it’s 100 degrees or more every day. Just sayin’.

BUMMER

A couple nights ago we had a mini hurricane. When I went out yesterday I saw this unfortunate vehicle on 110th Street.

Here’s another nature story: I have watched these two grow up from tiny goslings (not to be confused with my sometime drummer Jake Geesling).

I was able to get up real close to them for a couple minute photo shoot. But sure enough, mom and dad came waddling over eventually. They don’t want their offspring getting big heads. I understand.

Yarn cones + nest + teeny cupcake= awesome.

Here’ s a photo of what I have done of the tree part–you can just make out the cupcake nest at the tippy-top. Eventually it will have several nests–about enough for a dozen cupcakes.

I was hoping to make the frosting robin’s egg blue, but the blue cupcakes didn’t show up enough from the tree. Were I a real bird that would be a good thing–a little camouflage never hurt anyone. But my goal is for people to see the cupcakes and eat them all up. They have to be visible, see?

I tried a lot of different ways to make this nest. It was my idea that I’d use no glue–that I’d attach twigs together with back pressure. When I realized that was not working I tried sewing them together with thread–also not happening. Did you know it was so hard to make a nest? Well, it is. It’s hard and time consuming.

In the end I caved and bought a nice can of spray glue. Even this was not without its difficulty–the sticks stuck to my hand more than to each other. It’s actually not coming off my hands any time soon, nor the spatula I used to detach the poor nest from the plate I constructed it on. I may have to throw the spatula away or just use it in nest making evermore.

All this to say: I don’t know how they do it. This is really a sorry nest–it wouldn’t keep any eggs warm for a second. . And I had tweezers, a spatula, spray glue and needle and thread to help me, not to mention advice from a nice lady at Michaels. It looks simple, but it aint.

I read that the American Goldfinch makes its nest so snug that it can hold water. The American Goldfinch are geniuses!

This nest is going into my Yarn Tree and will soon house some teeny cupcakes with robin’s egg blue frosting.

My tree is nearing completion. My joy is great. I still think i have around 100 cones to go, though. Turns out, making a tree is pretty time consuming too, almost as time consuming as growing one.