DRIFT WOOD OR DRIFTED WOOD

Eons ago, the crew gave my parents the most beautiful grouped drift wood I will ever see. It was two pieces joined together with long iron bolts to hang on the brick wall in the living room at the farm. The display was massive. The living room was 16x20 feet and the brick wall was all one wall. It was a piece that would only fit there. When the farm was sold, the drift wood stayed.

Now, my question to you is: Is drift wood and drifted wood the same? Can you get a piece of gnarled root out of a lake that is low, dry it and call it drift wood or is it still drifted wood? If Mother were alive, she would say it was not the same but I never questioned why she was so determined there was a difference. She just was. Since she is deceased, I can disagree. All wood that drifts into shore is drift wood.

According the Norwegians, which you can all tell, but you can't tell them much, the first humans were formed out of elm and ash driftwood by the Norse god Odin.

Now that brings me to the topic of a piece of root Tom found in the harbor. It is fairly flat on one side so it can be hung on a wall. After it was cleaned and dried, we kept turning it to see how to put the hanger on before I did some bric a brac to it. One way it looked just like the skeleton of a pelvis. Well, we couldn't have that hanging in a professional office so we kept turning it until we found a non confrontational way to hang it.

The next step was to seal it. Now all the tree carvings we have, are NOT finished high gloss. If you look at trees, they aren't polished either. All I wanted to see was the various lines and marks and ruggedness of the piece. The next step was to hang it on a nail and look at it several times before putting something on it. But what? I am not stumped, just don't want to take away from the piece although clients looking at it aren't going to be willing to love it as it hangs. WHY? Because people are like that. One person already said I should paint a fisherman catching a bass on it. We like to 'finish' things. What is more finale than a tree root? Like it is totally finished, don't you think?

I have a precious little elf I got as a gift from my son. He sits nicely in the drift wood except he crashed once and his nose broke off. The chatter of that would be asking Tom if he KNEW that nose was broken.

It is time to look about the house and see what will work. What do we have that is old and rusty? Besides us.

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