Sold! to #97 . . . A New Jersey Auction Adventure

'Scuse me while I go close the skylights in the sunroom;
it just got through to me that it is pouring rain.

Leaves blow in and get caught on the screening.  Looks awful, doesn't it?

I never claimed to be a MENSA candidate.

Done, and I'm back at my desk.
Watching the ferns fly in the wind.

Dear Howard: Where DO those extension cords on the metal chair belong?

  

Everything outside is wet and toppled over.

 These pictures are taken through the drippy sunroom glass.

The poor iris-es . . . they finally bloomed, and they're getting their iris-es kicked by the weather.

There's been a lot of rain, but thankfully Sunday was beautiful.

Clear, a little on the cool side, but a perfect day for this -

a barn auction in a gorgeous gentleman's farm setting.

Howard's carrying the coffee cups; we are ready to bid!

Where's Howard now?

Getting ready to bid on some small vintage chairs.

And we got 'em.  Nine country Sheraton-style chairs.

Rush seats.  8 maple. 1 oak.  None is identical to any other.

They must have been collected over time.

Broken rush; we're keeping this one to use ourselves.
What do they say about the shoemaker's children going barefoot?

5 have seats in excellent shape; they're going to my antiques booth.

4 have holy smokes falling apart rush seats.

We're using them around the old oak table in our sunroom.

Slat backs, with thumb back posts.

Yup.  Boo-Boos on the seat of this one, but the chair is still

very sturdy and usable.  I'll trim and glue the rush,

and make nice ruffled squabs for the seats.

This one has little black rubber shoes.  None of the others has rubber shoes.
Possibly there's damage beneath that black rubber.  I'm ignoring it.
I think the little black feet are kind of adorable.  Like tap shoes.

Howard and I had talked - at length - about buying matching chairs

for around the sunroom table.  We just didn't think we'd find them

at an auction, and pay $4 apiece for them.  Yes, you read that right.

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Other auction wins . . . .

For $5, a box full of old silver plated stuff.

Like, a couple of old dog trophies from the 60s that appear to be shrimp servers.

Those Weimaraner folks apparently love their shellfish.

And . . . meat platters, serving trays, serving dishes, and a water pitcher.

Some of these pieces are going to polish up nicely; they'll head for the booth, too.

Others?  Not salvageable.  I'm going to try painting them.

Never thought I'd do that . . . but there's a first time for everything.

To the right - Clothes from Goodwill for Anne's latest
costuming job, a revival of West Side Story.

As the deli man says, "And vat else?"

Among other auction wins - a big lot of brass candlesticks,

a cut crystal lamp, a child-size drop leaf table, a country-style

Windsor bench, a brass tray on a stand, a Chippendale-style hanging shelf,

a box of antique linens - most of them useable! - and this:

a lamp made out of an old water pump, mounted on a piece of barn wood.

Yeah.  It's no great beauty, is it?  However, it brings back memories

of when my sister and I pumped oceans of water

from Grandma's backyard well to keep her garden in good health

when she took her annual summer visit to Aunt Bertha in Vermont.

I can still hear that distinctive squeak of the pump.

And how Peggy and I were sure that if we filched

a warm ripe tomato off a vine, that Grandma  - 

across Long Island Sound and many miles north - would know.

Well, I'll clean up this strange old lamp, and 

rewire it, and then decide - keep or sell?

It might look good in the sunroom.  Hey, you never know.

At least Dylan can't break it when he sneaks up

on the corner table to get a better view out of the windows.

How our Dylan spends a rainy day.  Love the damp curls!

Well, I have putzed around at the computer long enough.

Time to make myself useful.  -- Cass

Listen To The Rhythm Of The Falling Rain ....

On Saturday Night we got pounded.
Crazy Irene came to town.
She blew and she spat and she sounded
Like she wanted to blow the house down.

Irene, Goodnight.

Irene, Goodnight.

Goodnight Irene, Goodnight Irene.

Stop giving me bad dreams!

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Okay, I promise, no more bad rhymes or songs.
At least not today.

It is 4:00 in the morning on Sunday, and Hurricane Irene is not done with us yet.

According to the weather dudes, she hasn't gotten up to speed around here.

Oh joy.

Howard is in Manhattan until Monday night, so Anne and Dion and I are holding down the fort.

It's awfully noisy; we have a translucent ceiling in the sunroom and every drop can be heard.

The winds are just now picking up, there have been a few thuds outside, and I can't settle down to go to bed.  Yet.  Or, at all.

So what's a gal to do?  Blog, of course.

I'm recycling a post from August 2009, and it's about rain.

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What does this look like?

No, it is not a bad painting of Niagara Falls.

Stay tuned; all will be made clear. Well, not really clear. . . you'll see!

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We look through a glass darkly.

See that long piece of granite on the left? It is the step from the lawn
behind the house, down to the patio outside the conservatory.

Look closer.
There's our Niagara Falls, at the end near the steps:

On Saturday, when we traveled down to the Jersey shore
to pick up my 99-cent high-class Hooker coffee table
(read about that here, if you are curious),
we had brilliant sunshine on the Garden State Parkway.

That was Saturday, August 2009.  It didn't last.

On Sunday. . . I took these pictures through our conservatory windows:

The last time we saw this much water swamp That Old House this quickly, was the first day we owned it.

We ran for our soggy lives from the driveway into the sunroom.

It was also the day we discovered that rain on a conservatory roof is really loud,

and that the boiler room gets puddles during very heavy downpours.

Welcome, Mr and Mrs New Mortgageowner, to your new home!

These pictures aren't great, because they were taken through rain-spattered glass, but you can see the water
a couple of inches deep on top of the patio pavers, with ripples from the wind on the surface.

How big is a cubit anyway?

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And that's my lazy post for this Sunday, linked to 
Sunday Favorites, at Chari's Happy To Design blog.

Click here!


Since I fully expect to lose power when Irene really begins

blowing in about an hour, I thought I'd better post now.

Irene is already causing our shutters to flap and tree limbs to go flying,

and odd things to thud against the house.  And our patio is already covered in a few inches of water.

Can't wait to see what else she has in store.

And she's spawning tornadoes.  Charming.

I hope that all 65 million of us in Irene's path use our God-given common sense, and stay indoors and safe.  And Irene?  You've made your point; go home.  No, really.  GO HOME.  Thanks.  -- Cass

Sweet Summer, and A Few Reflections

This post is picture heavy, then wordy.
If you stick with me, thanks!


If the heat wave wasn't enough to convince you
that it is indeed high summer, how about this?

Sweet, fresh-picked and steamed New Jersey corn.

Thank goodness for small family farms and orchards that keep

going and going and going in our increasingly strip-malled suburbs.

Believe it or not, there's good reason to call New Jersey by its nickname:  The Garden State.

On Sunday evening, having rescued the sunroom from the plastic shrouds from the conservatory cleaning,

and moving paint cans and tools and other Howard-y things back down to the now-French-drained cellar:

We decided to share a simple summer supper with my sister Peggy and her husband Bill.

See the steam coming off the corn?  Action shot!  :-)

No snazzy tablescape.  Just the food, and the means to enjoy it.

Hmmm . . . our first customer!

Master Dion asks to join us at the table.  But as always, he is disappointed with our answer.

He looks for a second opinion.  No joy there, either.

But the rest of us enjoyed amazingly sweet corn,

steaks and brats grilled to perfection by the master of the house,

salads, and grilled zucchini.  For dessert, a peach & strawberry pie from the farm.

  

And a few lace-cap hydrangeas from the yard.

But we didn't eat those!

Ugh.  Peggy's right.  Meat does not photograph well.  Ick.

I remember when we were kids, our Mom didn't serve corn on the cob until after we'd eaten the rest of the meal;

otherwise her corn-happy kids would eat only the corn, she said.  And she was probably right.

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I haven't done a blog post since last Thursday. 

I had one planned for Friday,

but after the appalling news from Norway broke, I could not settle down to posting.

I am a second-generation American, whose family all came originally from that small country.

But it was not because it happened in Norway -- it was that I could not stop thinking about the parents

of those teenage campers, and grieving for them.  Their pain is unimaginable.

Between tears I am angry with the perpetrator, and with police for their slow response.

I am not sure angry is the right word to describe what I feel, mixed as it is with frustration.

No matter how peaceful a country, in these days -- sadly -- we must all be prepared for that unimaginable event. 

A television crew managed to charter a helicopter and get to the island when the police could not.

Well, I'm going to work myself up into a weepy mess again, so ... enough.

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Now for something completely different, and completely happy.

This morning, I found a very special comment on my Thursday post.  It's from a woman named Jill, who has been blog surfing for awhile, but just discovered That Old House.

In part, she wrote:  " . . .I just finished reading the whole thing! Ive been blog surfing for months since Ive become disabled and my laptop is my buddy. . . . I have told my family about some of your blogs, I am obsessed with Dion, and your house is like a dream! I pray you never stop blogging! I feel like a distant relative just catching up on the fam. . . . "

Wow.  Jill, I want to tell you that some members of our own family keep in touch with what's going on here by checking the blog, too!   Blogging, especially the type of personal blogging that so many of us do, is remarkable because it's so very much a two-way street.  

I began back in 2008, just reading other blogs, and talking a little bit to myself on my own.

When people started reading -- much to my surprise! -- I learned how to take and post pictures.

And I've read more and more blogs -- experienced births and deaths, holidays, job crises, health issues, joyful news and heart-wrenching stories, learned how to do all sorts of things, expanded my recipe repertoire, and most fun of all . . . gotten that peek into someone else's home & family, that little peek that let's me know that we're all in this together.

We may live in the North East, or the Far West, in Canada or England or the Philipines or France -- but we all -- and we are overwhelmingly women -- we all are sisters under our many-colored skins and even more colorful hair!

You know what blogging is for me?

It has given me a voice.  When I write, I'm not just talking to myself anymore.

It has also given voices back to me, especially at difficult times.

My most-commented-on posts were the ones about losing first our mom, and then our Pop.

And so many strangers become no-longer-strangers with their kind words and their own sharings.

So thank you, Jill, for reading and laughing and sharing with me.

I look forward to you starting your own blog!

And we'll all be here to give you a hand.

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Today, it is raining.  

And our cellar is dry.  Sweet.

In the sunroom, Anne has left a box on a loveseat.  In it, hats she made in a millinery class.

She's off to the city again, as she is most days.

But when she returns to her apartment in August, I will miss her.  Messes and all.

On the table, gone are the dishes from last night, gone and washed and back on the shelves.

Instead . . . some Goodwill finds.

Come back tomorrow and see what I found!

So here I sit with my laptop, and at my feet a basket of sea and shore themed Beanie Babies.

They belonged to our girls, but most of their old Beanie Babies went to a former neighbor's children,

and these few are heading for the beach house.

But what's this?  The Manatee has tumbled out of the nest! 

Manatee overboard!

And please don't tell our macho Cavalier spaniel Dion that his

grooming brush basket has a pink handle.  Thanks!  -- Cass

Join Mary at Little Red House for Mosaic Monday!  Click here.