Ten years ago today, I started this blog as a way to stay in touch with my Mom. She had moved into an assisted living facility where she could get therapy for osteoporosis and the daily help she needed to compensate for her failing eyesight and hearing. Since her new home was a five hour drive from where I lived, we had to figure out a way to communicate without just shouting into the phone. Luckily, the staff were equipped with iPads to help the residents connect with their families. Mom wasn't a fan of FaceTime so I decided to try sending her big photos in a blog form. She always liked my garden so on the last day of June in 2014 I published four photos of plants in our very soggy backyard. It never dawned on me just how long I might keep this blog going!
One of her caregivers asked me to use a unique name so she wouldn't have to scroll through lots of entries to find it, plus Calamitous Botanicus sounded more cheerful than Unfortunate Botanicals. The name was actually inspired by the crabapple tree in our backyard. In springtime one side blooms in pink and the other half is white. It's just two (or possibly more) separate trees that just happened to be growing close enough together to look like one. The most plausible theory for the two colors is that it's a pink flowering tree that was grafted onto the root stock of a white one. At some point a shoot started from the roots and voila, you end up with a twofer.
It's grown quite a bit taller in the past decade and we're happy it's flourishing. There's nothing really calamitous about it, though occasionally the two sides do bloom at different times.
Realizing I couldn't just keep posting photos of flowers and butterflies, I started looking around the internet for inspiration and came across an adorable blog called A Fanciful Twist. Vanessa, its creator, had been hosting an Alice in Wonderland party for several years, and I realized that was also a place where Mom's caregiver could find other blogs. I tentatively asked Nick, my hubby, if he would possibly agree to dress up as the Mad Hatter so I could take some photos for a post. I never actually expected him to enjoy playing The Mad Hatter, let alone become him. When he put on the top hat, he was completely transformed into His Madness. Maybe he really is this alternate personality and Nick is just a disguise?
It wasn't long before madness spread to the whole family.
After Mad Hedge Trimming, there was no going back.
