What you see on this picture is my current little bit of fun. Actually, it's not really very current - this has been going on for a while: I'm trying to grow caged distaffs.

This is a willow bush, and since willow grows fairly fast and makes new branches from where it's cut, I thought that maybe it might be possible to grow shoots with enough smaller branches at the top to form a cage.



Jury's still out on whether it will work or not, and on how long it will take to grow a distaff once I know how best to do the pruning and forming, but there is some progress on some of the shoots.



Forming the top part will be the next interesting step...