It's Me It's Me, A Blogwright

It is so amazing how one sees the world differently through a camera! I never really noticed before how trees change colors at different rates. Now, some trees have no leaves and some are just changing. You can be driving down the street and suddenly, a fall of leaves bombards your vehicle! The leaves all just depart from their tree at once, it is magical. When my children were small, they loved when that happened to us. The air smells differently (when I don't have this blasted cold, I can appreciate that!) Some plants are dieing while others are just coming to fruition. Fall is an amazing time!! Elsewhere in the world, Fall is ending; here, it is just getting into swing.

Now, Elke, had a question about teepees, also spelled tipis. Teepees are Native American mobile tents. They have a flap up top to keep rain out from the inside or let smoke vent, when they are made of skins or canvas. Some teepees are made of skins or material like cotton, others of plants. By "plants" I mean branches, sometimes sticks covered with branches that have leaves. Some Native American's even wove the branches and plant material into a large piece of material to cover the frame. The frame of a teepee is usually long sticks set up in a tri-pod or more-pod shape. Many modern-day teepees are made of canvas. Summer teepees are open along the bottom of the teepee. Winter teepees are covered with material along the bottom in order to keep the cold out.

This is a teepee made of branches. It would be made when you are without skins or in a survival situation.

Teepees are sometimes decorated on the outside. Some modern-day campgrounds have constructed teepees from wood and made them into a permanent building. The following are some depictions:

A skin summer teepee, or it might be made of canvas. Oh, when I mention "skin", I mean buffalo skins, the preferred teepee skin.


Permanent teepee or tipi This seems to be a teepee-shaped building.

No, I didn't take these photos. These I googled.

A cute tipi kit can be purchased through the Hearthsong catalogue.(One of my fave catalogues!) There are three sizes. Child, medium and adult! Here is a photo. You can see it is made with four posts. You paint whatever designs you want. A friend of mine had one of these -- just loved it!!!

N.B. To get your house "teepeed" means someone has thrown toilet paper all over your house and trees and whatever else they can! Sometimes they are mean and also contribute to the teepeeing with ketchup, eggs, mustard and whatever else they can mix in! Just having teepee alone, you can usually just grab the paper and clean it up. What you can't clean evaporates when it rains.