We have a very special tree in our side yard by our koi pond.  Much like an evergreen, it remains the same year round.  It looks rather sparse now, as it is still supposedly winter, but I always like that nature’s cloak reveals our tree after springtime’s wisteria has bloomed, summer’s jasmine has gone, and autumn has spread her chilled breath across the trees, causing their leaves to fall.  Under my travel section early on I wrote about our first trip which was a cruise up Alaska’s Inside Passage.  One of the towns I had so many incredible pictures from which to choose; we took a helicopter to the basin of a glacier and mushed sled dogs.  We needed a huge, red military Tomcar just to reach the base camp.  The puppies were precious and I simply could not select one photo from our great adventure.  So I opted instead to use a picture I took of all these blue bottles coming out of rods making them resemble flowers.  I remember we saw them on the way back to our ship.  I was so enchanted by them I knew I wanted to do something like that.  I came across the stand in a catalog and set about creating it.  These are not simply colored bottles I picked up to look decorative — each and every one of them has a personal significance to me.  I started with the little bottle on top.  It was given to me on our flight to Paris when the attendant found out we were on our way to our honeymoon.  There is another tiny bottle from the second part of our honeymoon in Venice.  I have beautiful blue ones from Morocco and Quebec.  There is a green one from Spain.  Another is saved from the case of champagne my husband’s aunt got us when we married.  I have an antique one I suspect held milk, several have held water, and the rest I believe were wine.  Of course I have a wolf bottle; our tree could not possibly be complete without it.  The American actress Gene Tierney once said, “Life is a little like a message in a bottle, to be carried by the winds and tides.”  This tree carries with it messages of special memories, important events, and things that just make me happy.  So when, in winter, the vines and branches are bare, we have a magical tree that is revealed in all its many colored splendor … our bottle tree.