Seat-of-the-pants "gardening"

 So you remember this wad of weeping willow tips from my friend's wind-damaged yard, right? I just tied it with pieces of itself and threw it on my dash.

Reason? Willow contains a rooting compound and you never know when it could be handy.

Problem? I have no idea how long these compounds continue to be effective. That was Tuesday when I got them. This is Thursday. I don't recall which windstorm ripped them off the parent tree.

This is my cottonwood tree that a bunny snipped off and didn't even eat. (How insulting!) It's the tallest of my 1-yr-old cottonwoods who sprouted in the white rock in our driveway. I moved them all to a different location last fall and it survived the winter. I was thrilled!

Then a bunny snipped it off about 4 weeks ago. It was about 13 inches tall and now it's about 9 inches tall. I put it in a foil-covered jar, hoping it would root, and I could put it back in the garden. (For the bunnies? I dunno.)

Now it has leafed out cute as all get-out, with these beautiful 5-7mm leaves, but has no roots. Damned bunnies.

So today I took about four bits of stem from that yellow wad of weeping willow, and snipped them into little bits.

I had thought to make a tea of them first, but decided, for an experiment, to just throw them in the water the cottonwood is living (for now) in.

So here's my cottonwood, in its foil-covered jar (foil covered so the possible roots would say Hey, it's dark here! This is good!) and there are the bits of willow in there.

I think of this as seat-of-the-pants gardening. It is definitely seat-of-the-pants. ... I'm not sure you can call it gardening.