We went to see my sister-in-law in Clifton and she lives on a lovely square with nice gardens which, pleasingly, are open to the public and not just the residents. With no real plan for the weekend, we arrived at lunch time and looked out across the square to see a tree that had been subject to some chainsaw massacring and left in the form of, well, a phallus with a boil or something.
Sadly, I have to confess at this satge to leaving my camera at home so no pics :-(
We could hear some tapping noices and see a few people in the gardens and so I asked the boys if they wanted to go down and take a look. No way, they weren't interested. So we took a look anyway, of course, and it turns out they were turning a dead tree into this, errm, shape and building a big seat etc. round the base. All were invited to add our carvings preferably taking the form of something other than usually seen carved on tree trunks. We said we'd stop for 15 minutes or so.
The jist of this is that we spent about 4 hours there. We then drove over to another part of Bristol to see someone else and spend the night there. In the morning we got up slowly and decided to come back to Clifton to pick up some things and then drive to Weston Super Mare. We called in on the tree party still at it with their gougers and said we were just staying 10 minutes. 4 hours more and we left. It's was wonderful. A simple community experience making friends, enjoying the sunshine and smiling. Incidentally it was sponsored by one of the neighbours whihc was very generous of her.
We have a big tree stump in our garden so that is going to get "the treatment" if the boys' momentum keeps up!
Posted by grahame at June 14, 2004 10:17 AM | TrackBackis "i left my camera at home" another way of saying "i made this completely bizarre story up" ?
Posted by: funkypancake at June 14, 2004 01:32 PM