Japanese houses in cities tend to have cement pads for yards. Which does free up time on the weekends (no lawn mowing). However, they look rather blasé and tend to increase the heat island effect. So, I got a tree-like plant to green things up. When my parents' visited, they got a trio of flowers, dirt and made a planter for us.

The problem is, whenever a strong wind blew, the plant would be knocked over. Which is generally not good for a plant, and leaves a mess of spilt dirt that has to be cleaned up.

So, when I was shopping with my son today, I spotted a home-centre, went in for a hose (the wife recently purchased an inflatable kid pool for the kids), and spotted wood. The idea for this just popped into my mind.

Originally, I intended to use wire to harness the tree in, and stabilize it with a brick. However, once I got home, saw that I had purchased a bit more wood for the bottom than I needed, the plan changed to using the planter for stabilization. As I started drilling on the supports for the tree, I realized that if I grouped them close enough, I wouldn't need the wire, and I'd also have amply room for the planter.

I finished things off with a couple strips of spare wood from a repair job to join the base wood together.

I should probably stain the wood, and may just do that in the coming days. Problem is, right now it's the rainy season in Osaka... so it might have to wait.