Pickles! Yum?

Hi everyone! This week we are making pickles!

I am a big chicken when it comes to really preserving food...

so I make refrigerator pickles...

                          


My kids LOVE pickles...

Mostly I make dill...

with lots of garlic and fresh dill...
 
                            

This year I made a couple pints of mixed veggie pickles too....they are ready today!

Okra...

Squash, brussel sprouts, onions...

                       

The okra is a little weird though...it has, um, snot? A clear goo or sap...I'm hoping the vinegar makes it go away! Because I love okra.

                     

Do you all make pickles? Jam?

 Have a great weekend!

 love

        lizzy

gone to the beach....

Still summer?

Autumn tried to sneak in this weekend....But summer fought back and won, treating us to yet another hot, very hot! and sunny weekend.

My prairie girl heart was longing for harvest and golden fields.

Apples and frost and crisp nights with starry skies. Summer laughed at my fantasy...and "the boys" went surfing....

I stopped by the wetlands bird sanctuary, looking for migratory songbirds...and was instead presented with an emerald green high summer marsh....

This is what lies behind the field, in first picture, above!

But there's a secret garden here!

Someone, for some wonderful but unfathomable reason, decided to plant a prairie-style high grass meadow  between the parking lot and the berm that allows us to see the marsh safely.

I'm pretty sure that a meadow is ecologically incorrect for a barrier beach island---which is truly just a sandbar with sparse vegetation at most.

Perhaps on the mainland, 100 years ago?

Before malls and highways and golf courses took over?

                    

Plenty of food for the migratory songbirds if and when they pass through...

Wild grapes....

below: Colorful! We called this joe-pye weed back in Illinois, no clue what it really is. I do remember that the berries made great ink for secret messages! [a/n This weed is actually called pokeweed. It is---unsurprisingly---related to another weed called INKWEED. Both used by colonists to make, well, ink!]

and scented grey bayberries, ingdigenous to the dunes here....

But---whyever this secret prairie meadow exists here and now---

...I treasure it!

love

    lizzy

gone to the beach.....

Flea Market

This week's market was the alternate "little" flea market...though it is nearly as big as the original market lately, just is held a few blocks west. The drive was so pretty through the seashore areas. I took a backroad shortcut through the dunes, now filled with goldenrod and grey bayberry branches and huge flocks of redwing blackbirds.

Again my eyes and imagination were bigger than my pocketbook!

 I found lots of good "stuff"...

More rhinestone pins and shoe buckles for vintage photo frames to hang on a Christmas tree...

A white ironstone low oval bowl, had to have it!

Really great find of chandelier crystals! Again for an all white Christmas tree?---or any tree...

Or for reverse collage....

I got these thinking "garland"...

but maybe wonderful as is?

Here are a few new all white/ all lavender buds hearts in the white bowl. So pretty! I used vintage buttons with a hint of amber and glitz for Autumn.

...[they should be available in my etsy shop / ebay by Monday. 7.oo each.]

And something for ME! Last week I said I adore turquoise...so how could I pass up a bracelet with a turquoise heart! Sterling silver, Mexican not Native American. I love it! The same dealer is holding a needlepoint turquoise Navaho snowflake/ star pin for me for next time. It looks just like a Feathered Star quilt block. Another treasure.

PS The type drawer and all the type were still there...the dealer wanted $100.oo.
There were maybe 75-100 large wooden type blocks, letters and very cool punctuation. She wanted $3.oo each for the individual letters....what do you all think?  (Buy it! Buy it!, right?). What else did I pass up? Lovely china-head and wooden peg Hitty dolls; many great old photos; sheet music for collages; more white linens. And still no mums, couldn't park close enough to the booth.

...next market in TWO weeks!

love

     lizzy

...gone to the beach




my beach, note the looong shadows, a sign of Fall
 and coming shorter days.