Just a peek at the 20-foot-tall icy mountain is enough to spread an infectious smile across Wynter Veal-Drummond’s face.
“We talk often, what would Grandpa say if he were here? Would he be proud, would he be smiling?” the 28-year-old said, looking to her mother Janet Veal-Drummond.
Wynter is the granddaughter of Mabel and Vierl Veal, the couple who thought up Veal’s Ice Tree in 1961. Awed by the dazzling appearance of ice accumulating on bushes near their pond, Mabel and Vierl decided to spray them directly with water.
Veal’s Ice Tree grew. JanetJanet and Wynter have continued the tradition that attracts curious visitors to their far southeast-side home, year after year.
The family hobby is a bizarre sight. Spectators frequently ask, “Is there really a tree under all that ice?” The answer is no. The base materials have varied, but have never been a live tree.
An Indianapolis News photo shows 14-year-old Janet Veal standing on the melting 1968 ice tree, its foundation exposed: a mound of discarded Christmas trees. These days, the family creates a skeletal base from two-by-fours, twine and brush. Once the base is built, they wait.
They won’t start the water flowing until there are five consecutive days of sub-30 degree temperatures, day and night. Some years aren’t cold enough to sustain it; Janet guesses there have been eight tree-less winters.
If the weather cooperates, they position multiple hoses, fed by an irrigation pump from the pond, around the base. Ice forms on the foundation, limbs and brush are added, ice forms and repeat.
The tallest tree reached 80 feet in the winter of 2013-14.
On a recent sub-zero day, Wynter and a friend strapped metal traction cleats to the bottoms of their boots and climbed the cascading tiers of ice like a set of stairs.
“Just the other day you couldn’t see any of this,” Wynter said, signaling to cumulus clusters of ice. “It was all limbs and two-by-fours and it looked ugly, and now it’s just this beautiful creation. I don’t know what gets better than this.”
They used hatchets to chop chunks of ice from around the hose openings to help the water flow freely and jammed dead branches into crevices at the top so the sculpture could grow taller.
Eventually, they streaked the cottony surface with pitchers of blue dye—Adding color “the old-fashioned way” for the first time, since it was too cold for a hose and garden feeder.
After tossing the first pitcher, Wynter let out a high-pitched cry of laughter and did a dance. “I’ve never done that before, it’s so exciting,” she said.
During the coloring, a family came by for a first visit and four children got to help dye the tree.
“When we’re not really feeling like we’re in the mood to go out in the cold, I’m thinking, this is making other people happy so I’m going to persevere during this cold weather,” she said with a laugh.
The Veal-Drummonds believe the tree honors their patriarch, Vierl, who strove to create beauty from adversity.
“I hope that when I have children that they see the beauty in this and that they say ‘Oh mom we want to take over,’ and that I’m 90 years old watching them build the ice tree,” Veal-Drummond said.
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