THE BOTTLE FAIRY

When I visited Dr. Maureen and her husband Scott a few years ago, I became smitten with their bottle tree. I’d never seen one before. Maybe it’s a Southern thing. It was a straight wooden post, over six feet tall, I’d reckon, and had holes drilled up and down its four smooth sides to be used for bottle placement.

S and M (as in Scott and Maureen, of course) are wine tasting groupies, so they have their nifty bottle tree filled with empty wine bottles of all colors. Lovely. So lovely that I wanted one for MY yard, too, except I’m too much of a cheapskate to buy one. Plus, I can’t drink alcoholic beverages of any kind and Big Bore only drinks an occasional red beer, which is no doubt hard to believe if you’re one of his relatives reading this. But, alas, it's true. No pretty wine bottles, empty or otherwise, at the Flaming Bore household.

Then, one day a year or so ago, BB came home with a big ol’ tree limb from an Osage Orange, “planted” it, and da-dum! There was my bottle tree! Now, I just had to scrounge up some bottles. I got most of them by rummaging through the glass barrels at the local recycle center. One came from a median strip in Wichita, likely deposited there by someone trying to avoid a DUI charge. Another once held fizzy grape juice that BB’s brother and sister-in-law gave us for Christmas.

And then, last week, I came home from shopping in the city and found a cobalt blue bottle standing next to the front porch. I figured Big Bore stumbled up on it, but I later found out he hadn’t. Hmmmm. Who was the donor? Why, the Good Bottle Fairy must have been at our house and left it!!!

A few days later BB and I were outside doing yard work when a nice lady who lives a few blocks away strolled by, as she often does in good weather, and she stopped to chat.

“Did you find the bottle I left you the other day?”

“You’re the Bottle Fairy?!” I exclaimed and ran over to give her a big hug. We learned that she’d brought the bottle, which once contained fancy water, all the way from Kansas City, and she bought it just to add to our “tree.” The mystery was solved--as mysteries usually are in small towns.

I’d previously thought our homemade hillbilly bottle tree is likely a source of ridicule in our neighborhood. It’s rather primitive looking, and that’s being kind, but at least one other person in town appreciates “fine art” when she sees it. Cheers to The Bottle Fairy!! Bottoms up!