Visions of Sugarplums

Just three days after I mentioned 1985’s Moving Statues of Ballinspittle in my blog, the front page of yesterday’s Irish Times carries the tale of the village church in Rathkeale, Co Limerick, where 2,000 locals have signed a petition to prevent the removal of a tree stump, because it depicts an image of the Blessed Virgin, as illustrated below:

Well, I’m convinced.

Meanwhile, in Stockton, California, a tree knot has been spotted which looks like a young Michael Jackson….

Felix Garcia, the guy who spotted this, reckons it’s Jacko at about 20, though to me it looks like him at the age XBox’s baby is now.

Anyway, since I’m not one to miss a chance to ride a bandwagon for all it’s worth, here is a picture of the tree in my front garden:

Study the picture carefully and tick off one by one as you find each of the following:

• The Blessed Virgin
• Karl Malden
• The spaceship Battlestar Galactica
• Wally
• A wombat’s sphincter
• Susan Boyle
• The company logo of the Nakatomi Corporation
• One page from the Dead Sea Scrolls, translated into Irish
• A miniature, to-scale model of the Battle of Midway
• An ent from the Lord of the Rings (a bit of a cheat, this one)
• Ludwig von Beethoven
• The poster of the girl in the tennis dress, scratching her arse
• Moldova
• Harry Potter, while wearing his Invisibility Cloak, but as a toga
• Windows’ Mystify screensaver
• And finally, the ever-lovely Yelena Isinbayeva (actually, don’t bother looking for her, I haven’t posted a picture of her in ages, so here’s one now).
  

  She's back...

Of course, now that my tree of visions (sorry, my Tree of Visions, hype is everything in these situations) has appeared on the Internet, I’ll have many pilgrims flocking to my door, so I’m converting my garden shed into a small and tasteful souvenir shop. People will be able to buy blossoms from the tree, dog-poo from the garden (kindly donated by my neighbours’ dogs), and a range of buttons and T-shirts (“I saw JC in Tinman’s tree”).

I was also thinking of trying to get a drinks licence, but that would be gilding the lily. People who can see the Virgin Mary in the top picture here don’t need alcohol.