The Bottle Tree
A couple years ago, I bought a welding machine for my husband, who had just retired and thought welding would be a fun thing to learn. This year for Christmas, he used his new skill to make something I’ve wanted for a long time: A bottle tree.
The general consensus is that the idea of bottle trees originated in Africa and was brought here by slaves who hung glass bottles from the trees to ward off evil spirits. But the superstition may go back even farther, when craftsmen first began making hollow glass bottles in Egypt and Mesopotamia around 1600 B.C., and the moaning sounds created by wind blowing over the bottles gave rise to tales that spirits could inhabit bottles.
The legend of the bottle tree is that it stands guard in front of the house and protects the dwelling from roaming spirits looking for a place to land. The spirits are attracted to the bottles glittering in the moonlight, and once they enter the bottle, they may buzz around like flies, but can’t find their way out. The theory is that the spirit would be destroyed when the next day’s sunlight hit the bottle.
I don’t know about any of that, but I do know that every bottle tree resonates with the mystery of its mythology, and the bottles look pretty when they sparkle in the sun.
Faeries in the Yard
On the night of the last full moon, I decided to go outside and take a picture of the house in the moonlight. First, I went around and turned on all the lights (we don’t always keep the place lit up like this!) and then I went outside with my camera. As I was taking the pictures, I noticed something strange. When I looked through the camera’s viewfinder, I could see these little greenish orbs moving around. I couldn’t see them with the naked eye, and since I wasn’t using a flash, it couldn’t have been a flash-reflection illuminating flying bugs. Besides, these orbs weren’t flying; they were floating. I even went so far as to take a video, and the orbs moved out of sync with the camera’s movement, so it couldn’t have been something on the lens. So, IDK what it was; I’m sure there’s a rational explanation. I’m going with faeries dancing under the full moon.
