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| Elmer |
| Elmer EverGreen is your average Joe WoodChip. Fundamentally a good tree, he’s just trying to get by. Pretty smart but sometimes baffled by today’s technology, particularly when dealing with copy machines and his H-PEA printer. Elmer still has a television with knobs on it. That’s kind of surprising, since he works in the iTree Department (computers) down at the Oxygen Factory. Many of the WoodChips work there, since making Oxygen is one of the basic industries of the Trees.
He spends as much time as he can with Maple and their little saplings Chip and Cherry, as well as their pets DogWood and PussyWillow. |
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| Maple |
| Maple has her share of busy days trying to keep up with the challenges of the office and whole EveryGreen family. Your basic, run of the mill WoodChip Gal, she usually feels like she’s running in place, just trying to keep up. Pretty smart by all accounts, she spends a lot of time helping Elmer deal with the technology of modern day life.
After a full workday, she goes home to her second job, trying to keep up with her little saplings Chip and Cherry, as well as their pets DogWood and PussyWillow — and Elmer’s latest technological crisis.
So sometimes life can get a little overwhelming for Maple. When there’s time, she likes to hang down at the Bark n Barley Bar with Elmer, just to listen to all the sawdust that gets spewed around.
She also secretly admires Captn Stumpy and his gruff ways, although there’s nothing to this, really. |
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| Woody |
| Woody is a little on the sleazy-treezy side, if you get my driftwood. He sells used cars and used insurance for a living and some of his deals are a little questionable. But there must be some good heartwood deep in that trunk of his because Mimosa is kinda sweet on him, although that may say more good about her than him. Woody’s just lucky Mimosa worships the ground he keeps his roots in.
He wears paisley ties and has loud tweed polyester bark. No one knows how this is possible but everyone agrees it matches him to a tree. And the Woodster mischievously calls the little paisley things on his ties fungameciums just to get a rise out of him.
Anyhow, Woody goes around whistling songs off-key just for fun, although he really has a nice voice and sings in the Barbershop TreeO. He’s an odd one, that WoodyTree. |
 Mimosa at the Bar 'n Barley Bar |
| Mimosa |
| Mimosa has big hair, big eyes and a big smile for everyone. She serves beverages down at the Bark n Barley Bar and always running around in a hot pink or lime green bikini. She owns fifteen of them. She’s not hard on the eyes, and all the guys are crazy about her. Mimosa’s not the sharpest chip in the pile, and is often seen scratching her head and backside trying to figure things out. Except for patrons ordering barley pops, everyone has to tell her how to mix their drink, every time they order it.
And when she’s trying to remember how to mix her own drink, a Mimosa, they’ll give her really big hints like, “starts with champagne, ends with orange juice, with nothing else in the middle. She usually guesses right the second or third time.
But everyone loves her for her kind words and perpetual happiness, thus showing that a “chipper” attitude can make up for a little shortfall in aptitude. |
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| Captn Stumpy |
| The old Captain certainly is a seafarin’ kind of guy. And there’s rumors he got his money spending time in the trade (the pirating trade, that is). But no one quite has the gumption to ask him. He stumps down to the Bark n’ Barley bar most days when his old war wounds aren’t acting up. Capt’n Stumpy has a peg leg and uses a wooden crutch. He still sails his sailboat the Shiver Me Timbers and kinda disappears over the southern horizon every four to six weeks for a few days. Then he’s back at the Bark n’ Barley Bar likenothing happened.
Rumor is there’s a little Latin lady tree on the islands that he visits on occasion, but Stumpy kind of keeps to himself on this and everything else. He likes his grog strong and plenty of it. He drinks rum as dark as bark and straight up. He doesn’t say much except “aarrgh,” which depending on the context means more grog (usually the case), hello (seldom the case), I agree, I disagree or I’m outa’ here. That is except once a year he gets pretty animated during Talk Like a Pirate week.
Stumpy’s bark is worse than his bite, and he has a soft spot in his heartwood for Mimosa. And some nights when June Nipper and ElWood are layin’ down some sweet woe some blues at the Bark’n Barley Bar, he seems to get a faraway look and some dampness in his eyes as he hobbles off into the night. |
 June Nipper playing Mangroves Leaf You |
| June Nipper |
| Of course, June Nipper’s one of the more notable WoodChips.Locally famous in her own right, her most requested blues song is Mangroves Leaf You. There isn’t a dry eye at the bar after this number. Even Capt’n Stumpy has a little sap showing in his eyes after this song.
The most prominent thing about June is that she has two really big talents. For one, she has a great voice, and man, that girl can sing the blues from way down in her heartwood. And folks always wonder how she can sing, play the guitar and balance her drink all at the same time … that June’s got some big talents for sure.
Well, everybody likes June and she can be heard singing and playing and nippin’ down at the Bark an’ Barley Bar most every night. Unlike Mimosa (who she treats like a naive little twig sister), June is smart as a whip……but her and Mimosa have some common ground, and have been overheard to agree that a “hunky mangrove is good to find,” or something like that … |
 Van Bough - WoodChips Artist Extrodinaire |
| Van Bough |
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Here’s WoodChip’s artist extrordinaire — Van Bough. Van Bough just loves to draw and paint, which he’s pretty good at, although sloppy when he does it. He’s always spilling his paint all over the ground.
He’s also often confused by art critic hacks who write about his paintings. For example, one recently wrote that he was “Illustrating the term ‘objectivism’ to denote a mythopoetical reality. Thus, the subject was interpolated into a dialectic paradigm of discourse that includes narrativity as a paradox.”
Van Bough doesn’t know what all that means. He was just painting a tree, really. All we can say is don’t worry about it, Van Bough. And welcome to the WoodChips Forest. We are quite partial to trees  .
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| Mr. BigTwig |
| Mr. BigTwig is totally deficient in the concept of personnel motivation, although he is unaware of this and thinks he is a great boss. His concept of teamwork is “a bunch of people doing what I say.” This concept carries on to his customers as well. His fantasy is to have a day when not one human employee at the company actually talks with a customer. He’s doing pretty well with this by using his “Where’s Waldo” concept of hiding the customer contact number in the most obscure place on the company web site. |
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| Dr. TreeAge |
| Dr. TreeAge has a bit of a gruff bedside manner but his bark is really louder than his bite. When he’s not poking and probing with diagnostic medical procedures, he offers direct, gruff advice. Like the time Woody came in and said, “Doctor, doctor, I broke my arm in fifty places,” and Dr. TreeAge said, “Well, stay out of them places!” |
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| DogWood |
| ere’s DogWood with his favorite bone. He’s the EveryGreens pet Dog. He spends most of his time guarding his bone, playing with the EveryGreen kids Chip and Cherry and the cat PussyWillow. DogWood also reminds himself not to do rude things to trees (chuckle). |
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| Sir BranchALot |
| When Sir BranchALot has a bad day at the office, he REALLY has a bad day at the office. Creaking back to his castle, he soothes his spirits and Treego with a few flagons of sap mead. But undaunted, Sir BranchALot will start a new day and sally forth to face the dragon yet again. |
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| Lee Bough and Les Arbre |
| Things have been a little slow on the job since 1789 A.D. (the French Revolution). Of course in tree time that’s no time at all. Actually, Lee Bough and Les Arbre don’t like to work much and are pretty happy business is slow. Lee Bough is constantly smoking cigarettes, not a very Tree like activity, but then, maybe it’s a French thing, what can I say.
Lee Bough and Les Arbre often have long and meaningless philosophical arguments about whether they should be paid by the hour or by piecework. Of course, it’s really a moot point since there’s no work to be done anyhow.
But all told, they stay pretty civil with each other since they are more or less joined at the trunk. And they frequently come up with those enigmatic French sayings, and ponder them for hours, like, “One day follows another, but they’re not the same.”
Huh?!? |
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| The Woodster |
| Short on material possessions, but long on wisdom, the Woodster travels light, whistling along the path of life. He knows that to be rich is to appreciate the simple things in life, and focus on what he has, instead of what he doesn’t. In this way, he is wealthy beyond imagining. Also known as the Merry Woodster because of his chipper attitude, he’s well read and currently writing the Merry Woodster Chiptionary. Always up for new experiences and learning, the Woodster often says “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” |
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| DeadWood |
| DeadWood’s a little on the crazy side, but then you would expect that from a unibiker tree. When he’s not showing off and trying crazy cycle stunts, he’s usually hangin’ with his girlfriend Holly Davidson. DeadWood proudly sports a tattoo of Holly on his upper right limb. There isn’t much crime in the WoodChips Forest so DeadWood, who has a really cool Holly Davidson Unicycle, serves as the volunteer police. Most of his crime fighting activity is pulling people over for speeding. |
Hi Dan, WOW, you have really come a long way. Great for you! Perserverence is your specialty. I remember the first little folded card. I will be ordering the great calendar. Thanks for sending this. -Jean in STLou IS
I love the way you write and also the theme on your blog. Did you code this yourself or was it done by a professional? I’m very very impressed.