Happy Halloween!

The Greed Season Begins

They're starting to arrive, mixed in with the political flyers--circulars and catalogs proclaiming BIG SALES full of bargains.  Clothes, jewelry, small appliances--anything you want or need and it's all ON SALE--at BARGAIN prices!

GO BUY IT, NOW!!!!

You know, until the last year or so, it never occurred to me that our entire economy is entirely based upon GREED.  Capitalism depends on people wanting EVERYTHING they can get their hands on, whether they need it or not.  Businesses, from tiny to gigantic, want us to max out our credit cards and strive to acquire EVERYTHING.  And we fall for it!

I was caught up in that treadmill myself.  A few years back, my mother asked me what I wanted for Christmas and I said EVERYTHING.  And I still do ... but, I'm finding that while I may still want everything, I'm learning to live with only what I really need.  And you know what, I don't always need to pay retail for what I need, either.

How did we come to this "avarice is everything" type of life?  (And more importantly, what does it say about us as a people?)  We've allowed ourselves to be seduced by ads and TV commercials--with colorful photography--to want everything and RIGHT NOW.  From hamburgers to hummers--and the bigger the better.

For instance, take fast food commercials.  They make every burger or slice of pizza look like a million bucks.  Usually with long strings of gooey cheese (stretched in slo-mo), or hamburger buns that look like they've been sliced with a laser beam.  When you get the actual food at these establishments, the meat is gray and the buns often look like someone sat on them.  The cheese is gooey all right, but it's so stringy you need a pair of scissors to cut it before you can stuff it into your pie hole.  No wonder there's an obesity problem in this country.  You can't watch TV for more than ten minutes without some fast food giant telling you to EAT IT ALL and hang the calories.

It's time to say ENOUGH.  It's time to go back to gilding walnuts and stringing popcorn to decorate the tree.  It's time to say "family first" not "consumer debt" to the holiday season.  It's time to say, "I will not go into hock so some CEO (of a company where the labor has be outsourced offshore) can collect his multimillion dollar golden parachute."

What do I want for Christmas?  A few books.  Maybe a couple of CDs.  But do I want my family to go into hock for it?

NO!

I'm going to try for a more simple holiday season this year.  I have a feeling, I'll enjoy it a whole lot better.

How about you?

Oh, how I love to rake leaves--NOT!

Over the weekend, Mr. Ivy and I drove through Central New York and admired the brilliant colors--spectacular oranges and reds stood out against the evergreens and deep blue sky.  Just gorgeous.  Lots of the best trees weren't in the woods, but in regular people's yards.  And ya know what happens when they fall?  Someone is gonna have to rake them up.

Why is it that TV commercials (and usually for some kind of pain reliever) try to convince us that raking leaves is fun?  It's not.  It's back-breaking work.  Yesterday I raked a bunch of leaves.  Mostly, I dragged them.  Hubby walked around the yard (about a million times), with the proton pack (otherwise known as a leaf blower) and herded the leaves into BIG, l-o-n-g piles, while I raked them onto a long green tarp, and dragged them around the side of the house, through the backyard and into the field behind us.
E-I-G-H-T-E-E-N times.

Okay, it was my idea to rake the stupid things.  I figured if it rained (and it looked like it might), it would be a lot harder trying to scrape wet leaves off the grass--or worse, try to find any grass under the wet leaves come spring.  So, out we went to take care of the leaf problem.

Two hours later . . .

To reward myself afterwards, I decided to take care of the catnip crop.  More fun!  Years ago, we decided to buy a catnip plant to give our guys a treat.  Since then, that one little plant has produced hundreds of children scattered around the yard.  To some people, catnip is nothing more than a weed, but to our cat, Buster, it's his drug of choice.  And we are his enablers.

A few weeks back, I went around the yard and rounded up all the plants.  I put them in the garage to dry and have been meaning to do something with the leaves.  Yesterday was the day.

Buster came out into the enclosed porch, while I ripped the leaves from the stalks outside on the picnic table.  A lot of catnip dust flew into the air, and Buster tried to jump through the screen to get it.  While I did the harvesting, a bumble bee paid me a visit, sitting on the watering can.  It was in the 50s, and Mr. Bee was quite tired (and probably cold).  He rested for a while, and we conversed, then he flew off, hopefully for home.

Like my beans, this catnip crop was stellar.  We've got more than enough to last the winter . . . uh, unless Buster learns how to open Tupperware.

Oh, and guess what:  it rained all night.  We got those leaves up just in time.

Have you done your raking yet?

A sucker for watercolors

Okay, I admit it ... there should be a self-help group for people who fall in love with one particular item and don't care what form it comes in.  For me, it's watercolors.

I saw this one at a yard sale over the summer, and even though it's no longer "in" to have these kinds of images around (that form of Country is sooooo passe these days), I fell in love with this original watercolor of a young girl.  It's just darling.

I don't yet know what I'm going to do with it, but it's just so sweet.  Don't you agree?

Aren't they adorable?

As I've mentioned before, the yard sales have been few and far between. But for some reason we were blessed with fantastic weather this past weekend, which caused a bunch of people to have sales--even though they hadn't advertised them.  (Maybe I can just sniff them out.)

The best stop, though, was in Wolcott at the Presbyterian church's rummage sale.  Look what I found!

And here's the back side of the poppies.

And the back side of the rose mug.

I want to believe that these are hand painted. (One of them is signed.)  But I'm just not sure.  Sadly, the cups themselves are cheap.  (They look like Fire King, but they aren't marked.)  But who cares when you can drink out of such lovely mugs.

My latest junking find . . .

Ohh look what I got last weekend at one of the (very few) sales we found.  They're getting few and far between this time of year but I was so pleased to find this beauty.

The lady who sold it to me told me she used to have a lot of them, but got BORED of collecting them.  Her loss, my gain!

Harvest Festival Report!

Goodness, where does the time go?  I just realized I went to the Sodus Harvest Festival almost two weeks ago.  Well, here's the report.

My friends and I wanted to get there early because for the past two years we've arrived near lunchtime only to find that the apple crisp has been sold out.  So guess what--there was NONE this year!  Not only that, but last year we had the most amazing Mexican food sold by a local (authentic) Mexican restaurant.  They didn't show up, either.  (And they don't appear to be listed on the Chamber of Commerce brochure, anymore ... and since this was a chamber function . . . .)

After wandering around, we decided to buy a bag of kettle corn.  Before I could take a picture, we'd gobbled it up.  (Oops.)  But I did find a copy of the logo on line.

Since nothing much was happening, we inspected the contestants for the biggest pumpkin contest.

Believe it or not, these are the small ones.  (above)

We figured that big boy in the back was the winner and got to talk to the guy who owned it.  (He was quite proud, and rightly so.)  All the "contestants" were going to be lifted by a crane and dropped to earth to smash into a million bits.  What fun!  (NOT!)  In fact, the guy told us he had no intention of letting them smash his pumpkin--not after all he'd done to grow it. He intended to take it to church to let the kids climb over it until it rotted.  (Then he'd cut it up for the seeds.)

So ... that was the fun (?) of the Sodus Harvest Festival.  Will we go next year?  Why not?  What else have we got to do on a cold and rainy weekend in September?

Waste not, want not . . .

Every year my next-door neighbors plant tomatoes next to their house. At least five plants.  Every year they pick one or two of them and let the rest of them rot.  Every year I vow I'm going to go over and steal them.

(So far I haven't.)

What a waste.

And add a layer of butter . . .

Okay, I admit it.  I collect far to many things.  But if you collect small items, they don't make quite so much clutter.

Something I've always been attracted to are butter pats.  They're just so darn cute!  Here's one I found at the Pultneyville Community Sale a couple of weeks ago.

Since I'm a sucker for blue-and-white china, I had to have this.  Cost:  $1.

In case she gets thirsty . . .

One of my favorite coffee-table books is called Extraordinary Touches for an Ordinary Day, by Jo Packham, which is basically about putting together sweet guest rooms.

One of the things mentioned in the above book was adding a small carafe and glass.  I've been looking for one for years and finally found one at the big Pultneyville Community Sale (which seemed to have been put on mostly by people like me; antiques dealers who were no longer in business and selling off their former stock--cheap!)

I found this little hand-painted beauty.

My sister-in-law comes to visit every now and then.  I hope she enjoys our guest room.  I've tried to make it pretty and comfortable.  Now, if she gets thirsty in the night, she won't have to get up in search of water.

A little bit of summer ... all year long

I love church sales.  The beauty of them is ... they happen all year long (but mostly in the summer).

I saw this little urn filled with silk roses at a church sale.  It had a price tag of $2.

Isn't it darling?  I know come winter I'm going to long for my garden ... but with this little beauty, I'll have a touch of summer all year long.

Just for fun

It's the end of the season and the yard sales are drying up.  But as a last hurrah! Pultneyville, NY puts on a community yard sale in mid-September, and that's where my junking buddies and I went this past weekend.

The free boxes were great!  I got a book of New Yorker cat cartoons and a tiny book of walking tours of Scotland with gorgeous photography.  At one sale, they had copies of Mad Magazine for a dime each.  I bought two (with Harry Potter spoofs) and now I wish I'd bought every copy.  I haven't laughed so hard in years.  (I'm getting a subscription!)

One of my purchases was just for fun.  These little quilted cubes.  Aren't they cute?

I'd say that the above picture is about the actual size of the tiny, hand-stitched cubes.  I'm going to hang them on my Christmas tree this December.

They came with a little cross stitched draw-string bag.

This picture is smaller than the actual size of the bag -- but not by much.  It, too, will find its way to my Christmas tree this year.  And the price for these three handmade items?  Twenty-five cents.  Some people just don't value hand-made items.

But aren't they darling?

My biggest purchase

When I was a dealer in an antiques arcade, my bread and butter was "smalls."  For one thing, they didn't cost a lot, and I usually sold enough to make my rent.  Period.  Profit?  If I made one, it was usually less than $10.  I stayed in the business for so long just because I enjoyed the thrill of the hunt.  And I still do.  I just buy a whole lot less these days.

So, what was my biggest purchase this summer?  A pitcher and ewer.  (Did you ever notice how many times the word "ewer" is used in crossword puzzles?)

Anyway, this one is a beauty . . .

. . . or it was.  What you can't see are the cracks in the back side of the pitcher.

So why did I buy such a flawed pitcher?  First of all, I LOVE brown transferware.  I had a yellow pitcher and ewer sitting in the same place in my guest room for years, but it was something someone made in ceramics class.  Mind you, it was pretty nice, and it had yellow flowered decals.  But it wasn't an antique.  I bought it in the hopes that one day I'd have an antique one to put in its place.  The yellow one cost me $4 at a yard sale in Oswego, NY.  This one came from a yard sale in Fair Haven, NY.  The woman was downsizing for a move to Florida and was selling her treasures.  When I saw the price tag on this ($5) I knew I had to have it, cracks and all.  She figured it was at least 150 years old.  I'm not so sure . . . but it's got to be at least 100 years old.

I love it.  How about you?

New for the garden

For years I have begged Mr. Ivy for a burning bush.  I know, I know--why didn't I just buy one myself?  After all, in the spring I wanted hollyhocks and I bought two fine specimens (which REFUSED to grow, no matter how much I watered them or how much Miracle Gro I gave them), and I bought myself a very robust honeysuckle plant, too.  But I didn't think to buy myself a burning bush.

Well, my begging (nagging?) did not go unnoticed and on Tuesday Mr. Ivy presented me with a burning bush. Only it's green.  And it has rained for two days straight and who wants to plant a bush in the rain?

Still, I'm hoping that by next fall my bush will look like this.

What's new in your garden?

Toil, toil, today ... with hot dogs and potato salad on the side