A quest for branches

The other day I wrote about the hanging bird decorations taking 16 months to come to fruition. Some of the time was spent trying to find the perfect branch to hang them from. Who knew that finding a branch would prove to be so difficult?! I made my first production sample with a dowel rod. While I like the look of a single bar at the top for the birds to hang off of, the dowel rod wasn’t special enough. So I knew I needed to find a branch. Easy Peasy I thought! Turns out, it’s hard to find branches in the length that I needed them (14″) of a uniform width that wasn’t too wide. Under 1″ wide is usually where a branch starts thinning out and so one end of the branch might be 1″ but the other end would be much smaller. And I wanted it to be between 5/8″ – 3/4″. No go anywhere! My husband starting collecting fallen branches while out walking the dog but I decided that walking around looking for the perfect fallen branch wasn’t a good use of my time. (And I was worried about bugs) Finally I stumbled on an artist who uses willow branches on Etsy. I talked to her to see if she could supply me with branches in large quantities and of a uniform length and width. No problem she said! After months of searching, I literally could have kissed her! The branches are wild native willow which grow wild on the sides of the road where she lives and spread like crazy. So property owners are happy to have her cut them down and, when they grow back in a year or so, she does it all over again. And now I have beautiful branches for my birds!