Wild Grape Vine to Wonky Grape Wreath

I made a giant grape vine wreath!  Or, at least I made a giant circle from grape vines, but I'm not convinced it qualifies for official wreath status yet.  A few weeks ago Brandon and I took a day off from farm house renovations and dedicated an entire Saturday to some much need garden and yard clean up.  We cut down the asparagus, disassembled the bean teepee, and rolled up all the bits of chicken wire that I use for chicken proofing my garden beds.  Once the garden beds were cleaned up, we raked leaves from under our big silver maple and used them to mulch all the garden beds, and then laid the tomato cages on the leaves to keep the chickens from scratching up the leaf mulch. It really did feel like tucking the garden away for the winter.  

The picture above is from the end of the summer.  As you can see, the back porch was over grown by the wisteria on the right side of the photo, and wild grape vine on the left side of the photo, which, when I stopped trimming it, grew up the side of the house.  

Not only did the wild grape vine grow up the side of the house near the porch and back door, it then spread along the wall to cover nearly the entire back side of the house, studio window, kitchen window, part of the roof, and then extended along the cables that run to the house from a telephone pole.  I thought it was awesome.  

I knew Brandon would not think it was awesome if he ever noticed how it was pulling the siding off the house, workings its way under the roofing, and blocking the sun light from his studio window.  Fortunately for the grape vine, he never paid any attention to it all summer, even though he had to practically duck under it on his way out the back door.  I knew the vine had overstepped it's bounds, so I was prepared for the severe trimming it was going to get once Brandon tuned in to it's presence.

Once Brandon started to really look at the vine during our clean up day, he responded to the grape vine's aggressive attempt to dominate our house with some aggressiveness of his own, and pulled it from the house cut the whole thing down to the ground! Bad, bad grape vine!

While Brandon cursed the vines tenacity and struggled to remove it from the telephone wires, I collected the longest pieces from his work and began to assemble my wreath.  I may have been overly ambitious, because making a wreath this big made it very hard to get it in a round shape.  

When I showed Puck my progress, I could tell that he was very worried about the non-circular condition of my wreath.  I tried to get him to jump through the wreath, lion tamer style, but he just gave me a look and sent me off to play with the silly chickens.

Mrs. Hall seemed willing to entertain the idea, but June kept her distance.  I could tell that I would need many kernels of corn and more time than I had left to accomplish the chicken through the wreath trick.  

By the time I got tired of finished it, I had at least added enough vines that the wreath was semi circular.  I think I could really dress it up with some ever green boughs and some pine cones or berries, even if it is a bit wonky.  

This vine doesn't get edible grapes, but it does have pretty little curling tendrils that help it attach to things.  I think they look very nice, and was excited to get to keep some of them by making my wreath.  Judging by the progress the vine made this summer, I don't have any concern that it won't recover from Brandon's pruning, and I'm already looking forward to Brandon's expression at the end of next summer when he realizes that the vine he cut down is back where it started!