The Olive Trees Get Haircuts

Well, against my better judgement, the olive trees received haircuts the other day.  I have to admit that there were several reasons to go ahead and do this.  I had to agree that their overgrown state looked bad -  nothing at all like an ungroomed olive tree really looks like (seen below).

this beautiful olive tree picture brought to you by Luberon ( sb) (Creative Commons License: Attribution, Non-Commercial)
Open on Flickr

Yes, I agree that our trees were always looking perpetually shocked in the midst of their Olive Tree Bad Hair Days.  You can see the unnatural state of their post-groomed/pre-haircut life here:

And yes, I have to agree somewhat with Jason that in a well-groomed neighborhood such as ours, letting the olive trees let themselves go kind of makes us look bad and would be sure to earn us looks of contempt at the annual neighborhood Christmas party. 

However,  I truly, truly don't think that olive trees are supposed to look like this:

Trying to make the best of it, I decided to at least find something resourceful to do with all the leftover olive "hairs" piled on the front lawn.  I looked long and hard on the Internet for crafty project ideas to make with these branches, but other than Noah's ark/dove reenactments and Olympic wreaths, I got nowhere.

I did, however, find another like soul out there in the Internet world.  Her blog is http://www.azplantlady.com/. .   She has several wonderful posts describing "Scary Pruning Practices and Their Unfortunate Results", and there she also talks about what she calls "poodled" olive trees (which of course makes me want to open up Photoshop and make our poor trees into poodles, as well).  She also has a very interesting post called "Shrubs Aren't Meant To Be Cupcakes, Frisbees, or Pill Boxes."   In addition, she talks about how she bravely does drive by (photographic) shootings of these sadly pruned trees and bushes.  Which I have to say, truly bolsters my confidence to record some of the more unusually-pruned trees and bushes in our neighborhood. 

Starting with ours, of course.