When the slaves were brought to the United States, from West Africa, they carried some of their customs along and this is one of them. The fancy has persisted in some rural areas of West Texas and has begun to appear in urban, and suburban, places.

In West Texas, particularly, the hot sun works marvellous colour changes in the glass.

The trees’ purposes are to trap evil spirits in the upturned bottles and keep them out of peoples’ houses. It works well, because I don’t ever see any of them.

The older models were dead trees, with spiky limbs, or having sixpenny nails driven into them, at angles, to keep the bottles upright.

I made my original of pvc pipe, requiring lots of little pieces of pipe and angles, It bent, and soon wilted in the hot, Texas sun. Eventually I had to replace it with a wrought iron structure, which you see pictured..

Yes, it gets some odd looks, as do I. But, it's my little fancy and I've enjoyed it so much.