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Thursday, November 19, 2015

What to do with all the willow branches that fell in your backyard, when you have rabbits

So the snow from a storm of a few weeks ago is still melting in my backyard. We have had enough melt in the two days to expose two things: one, that my lawn looks like hell from all the wet leaves and sticks, and two, there are a heck of a lot of downed willow branches. Our backyard recieves shade all summer from a huge weeping willow tree, that I swear is getting all of it's water from our lawn. And as soon as a storm hits we have a lot of downed branches to clear away from this beloved, but messy, tree.

Now that I have rabbits, I have a use for all the mess: rabbit willow wreaths. I got the idea from a vendor at the rabbit show. She sold little wreaths of dried willow branches and leaves that she wove together for the rabbits to eat and sharpen their teeth on.  I could do that! Hers were dried, but fresh is ok too.

So what I did was to select a few long branches and cut from the main limb. This is easy, as willows like to weep and grow long branches. If you get to your downed limbs fairly quickly, they will be nice and green and pliable, making them easy to work with.

I then bundled and braided the long branches (covered in leaves) together, sort of like making
dandelion flower wreaths when you were a kid. I also like to braid, as with boys I never get the chance to do anything fun with hair. You could just bundle together branches and wrap into a round wreath circle with a longer piece to secure them into that shape. But, its prettier and tidier to do by braiding.

Once the branches are braided, I formed them into circles, wraping the ends around the circle to hold everything together. Voila! A rabbit eating and chewing wreath. I can now store the 20 or so wreaths that I made from this storm with the pine cones and sticks I am saving for them to chew on once the current batch is used-up. I put these in a tote box in the garage. The wreaths are a great boredom-buster too, for when it is too wet for an angora rabbit to be hopping in the lawn.



2 comments:

  1. I found the blog! And your wreaths are so awesome. I am definitely going to show this to the girls in the morning. Now you are making me wonder whether there are any leaves left on our willow tree. I'm thinking our bunnies would really enjoy these wreaths as well.

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    1. The rabbits also like the branches. I saw many willow branch toys for sale online for rabbits, so I thought this would be comparable. Helps them sharpen thier teeth too.

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