One heckofa Yule Ball

Did I invent this?? Not sure. This is Roswitha's front door, and she loooooves it when I make these every year. Super fun.

Anyways, first you take one hanging-moss-basket from which you have just clipped all the bedraggled annuals (silently thanking them for a glorious summer of colour).

Then you roam around the garden with your secateurs and gather an armload of beauteous evergreens and berried treasures.

For the above (and below) set of Yule Balls I salvaged:
--blow-down fir branches
--holly and Salal branches from the far reaches of the property
--hydrangea blooms and the red berry-panicles from Nandina domestica (by the pond)
--white Symphoricarpus/Snowberry and red berries on Willow-Leaf Cotoneaster surreptitiously gathered from the roadside on my way to work
--white Baby's Breath from a bouquet the owner just happened to be tossing out
--and the final touch: wire-edged ribbon bows we saved from last year (easy to make)

Once you've jammed all the tough evergreen branches into the mossy soil-ball (so easy! no wiring necessary!) in a somewhat even fashion, with some dramatic foliage also trailing from the bottom of the ball (no wiring neccessary!), you can add the more delicate and colourful bits. Then remember to water it before it freezes solid because it will last FOREVER or at least until February. And you can always remove the bow to deter carollers after the holidays.




Fa la la la la la la la la la la la la la la

*Oh--and we just had an idea today, when we noticed birds were picking away at the Yule Ball berries: wouldn't it be an amazing gift to make one of these for someone, and also spike it with bird seed/hanging suet balls...whatever you feed birds? Sounds like a good idea--unless a crazed flock flash-mobs your handiwork into a pile of detritus under a hanging dirt-ball. That would be sad.