Making a vine wreath

I made some woodbine wreaths yesterday and it was such FUN! I thought it was easy, too, which is why I went crazy and made four, one nearly after the other.

If you want to do this fun and kinda zen thing, find a nice source of woodbine or grapevine. Know your plants, and know your dangerous plants like poison ivy and poison oak. I’m pretty sure you won’t use greenbriar, it’s just thorny and painful to touch.

These are the two which are easiest to find where I live: Virginia creeper, also known as woodbine, which is the one with five leaflets, and wild grape. Wild grape looks to me like it has leaves a little like maple leaves. Of course if there are grapes present, that's a giveaway. IF they are grapes and not some other berry. Just sayin!

Also, both woodbine and grape will re-grow from this wood you're using, so you may want to consider that, if it's something you have in your yard.  If you're gathering on the roadside, be informed about how recently anyone may have sprayed. And it's the season for pesky wasp-type insects, so take care of yourself, and don't work too close to a food source.

I used to have a trumpet vine with the big orange trumpet-shaped flowers, and I hear you can use those, too. 

Another friend said she has river willow, and all willows can be used, either green or re-soaked after being cut and left.

So! 

1. Have a good, sharp pair of shears, clippers or secateurs. 

2. Maybe have some cheap twine since some wreaths get oblong, and need a little encouragement if you want them to be rounder.

In my case, I had a lot of vine in one place, and I cut several lengths of about 9-12 feet.

I just formed a hoop from the first three or four feet of the vine, and started winding the vine around the hoop I formed. I’m right-handed, so I twined front to back in that direction. It looks rough at first, but it fills in nicely.

Keep going until the wreath is as full as you like it.

The woodbine leaves and stems with berries are about to fall off in early October, which is when I did mine. You can break them off easily or they will fall off as the wreath dries.

Some stems are going to stick out awkwardly. Tuck in now, if you want, as this may be the most pliable they will be. Or just leave them at first, and you can snip them off later. If you want to decorate your wreath, these sticking-out stem parts can be handy.

Some folks leave 6-8 inches sticking out evenly all around the outside as a decorative fringe, and that is certainly an option.

I had one large egg-shaped wreath, and I put it over the bottom of a five-gallon bucket to dry. You can also dry them tied into shape with twine or some string, depending on how thick you made it. And so far, I'm just drying mine in the back porch and deciding what I'm going to do with four wreaths when I don't really need any. Maybe as gifts. If I get crazy and make too many, maybe a craft sale. ... Nah.

Questions of life and wild berries du jour

What's important? Where do you want your life to go? What do you do for fun?

Apparently I don't have the answers to the two latter questions, because there's SO MUCH that I like to do and want to do.

In some bits of free time, I have begun researching my friends' genealogy. Because I'm crazy, I guess. But I do like giving others a boost into one of my obsessions.

Speaking of obsessions, I ate five grapes earlier on a walk, and I'm quite happy about it. But the vine right next to it has seemingly identical fruits, but is a totally different vine. I know the vine I ate from is a wild grape and these are my first wild grapes. By the way: Yum. Seedy but yum!

Right next to (and probably intertwined with) this particular grape is a greenbriar or catbriar that ALSO has little grapelike fruits. The thing you notice most about greenbriar is that it is so so so thorny. Even the folks giving it a common name call it prickly catbriar, because telling you it is thorny once is not enough.

So the fruits of Smilax hispida ("bristly vine") are beautiful, and very similar to grapes in size, at least at this location. I read that the early spring shoots and leaves are the really edible parts, and the berries have thick skins and last through the winter. I did find one place that mentioned making jellies with them. Most talk about the early shoots.

This photo is of greenbriar, but the leaves vary by genus, and the ones I see on my walk don't look heart-shaped like that, although they all have palmate veining.

So now you know. They apparently like very similar locations to grapes.