Un-Flea Shopping

Hi, everyone! I hope you had a lovely weekend. We had one stunningly gorgeous day and one grey dismal day...batting .500, lol!

I made tiny white hearts...

and began some doves, for Christmas selling....I'll post better pix when they are done!

And because there was no flea market this week I spent some time sorting through the boxes of treasure from my parents' home. Yes, I still had boxes...this was the last one, marked "chipped Haviland Gravy Boat"....

 Ooooh! So sad. It is more than chipped!

Should I glue it, or chip off the rest of the attached plate? I know I should toss it out but I love this china pattern!

My grandma must have loved morning glories as much as I do.

   

We see lots of Haviland rose patterns but I 've never seen any Morning Glories except her set. (I even have a dozen perfect dinner plates with tiny roses...FREE!  from the Cape Cod Dump's swap shop!)

The little oval dish went  to soak in  Clorox-water and came out so pretty! (This is a "before" photo.) For my bracelets on my dresser or corralling buttons when I sew?

I figure I'll save the damaged gravy boat and grow paperhwhite narcissus in it this winter....

May as well enjoy it as it is, I think!

PS Peggy B had a wonderful idea for saving a fragment of this shattered heirloom. She recommended http://cupidscharms.blogspot.com/. The artist there makes gorgous "found treasures" jewelry, take a look! And if she does custom work and makes me a heart (what else!) I'll be sure to show it to you all! Thanks, Peggy, lovely idea! lizzy

love

         lizzy

......gone to the [rainy] beach

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.....