A Second Look--September 28, 2011

If the garden shoe fits, snap it.

Bottle trees

I don't know everything. I know that. Then why is it when I learn something new, I can't believe that I didn't already know it?

This happened a couple of years ago when we visited a small museum that had a display on bottle trees. It was the first time that I had heard of bottle trees and I was fascinated. They have a long history (maybe thousands of years) so there are a lot of variations on their origins and how they work. The general idea is that the bottles capture evil spirits before they can enter your house. In other words, they are a good luck charm. There is also a general consensus that they were part of the African heritage that slaves brought to this country. They are popular in the southern US and blue is the favorite color for the bottles. Besides being a good luck charm, today they are used as garden art.

After I first learned about them, I discovered they were not as rare as I thought. I began to notice references to them in various places, and a few months later, one popped up in my neighborhood. So as I always do, I wondered how something that many others knew about had slipped under my radar.

But maybe they weren't as far removed from my experiences as I thought they were. Customs change and the bottle trees have had many variations including putting blue bottles in your window for luck. Now here's the interesting part. I had had a blue bottle in my window for several years. It came from my grandmother's house where she had it in her front window. I put it in my window just because I thought it was pretty. Who knew that maybe it was really a good luck charm based on a bottle tree. So I almost knew about them. I feel better.

Decorated bottles from the exhibit that first introduced me to bottle trees.

Neighborhood bottle tree. They have been slowly adding bottles.

My blue bottle from my grandmother.

Information from the exhibit we saw.

Food Waste Friday, September 23, 2011

It's time for Food Waste Friday, when the Frugalgirl encourages us to post pictures from the previous week of wasted food from our household. This accountability hopefully will help us to be more careful with our food and maybe save some money.    

Here it goes for this week.

Salsa: Good and better

We had a little bit of salsa left in a jar that has started to mold. It was good, but the salsa we made this summer with fresh tomatoes was better. Thus, the store-bought salsa got shoved to the back and forgotten.

Also, I recently harvested all of the green tomatoes off of a cherry tomato plant before I pulled the vine. Some of them did not ripen well (spots and mealy taste), so they're going out with the salsa.

Meet Lucky

Lucky

(so named after surviving an unfortunate

encounter with a slamming door as a kitten.)

L-Lucy's litter mate

U-Unusual coloring--black-tipped gray fur

C-Calm, except when the vet is involved

K-King of our four cats

Y-You'll love him.

A Second Look, September 21, 2011

This week, it really started to feel like fall with cool evenings and warm afternoons.The moderate weather, along with the rain we have been having, has started a new round of blooming. Some are plants that went dormant during the hot weather of August and others are fall bloomers only.

Also, this week's Second Look had a second look. Wally asked if I had walked around the yard yet and had I seen the big mushrooms. Well, I thought I had looked all over the yard, but I missed what he had seen. I guess that's why we need to do a second look sometimes. So after my pictures, you will see what Wally found interesting this week.

Sternbergia lutea
At first, I thought they were fall crocus.

The newly blooming sedum was teeming with bees and common buckeye butterflies.
(Thanks to Aunt Martha for the butterfly identification.)

Blanket flower. Another flower from this plant won a blue ribbon at the fair last week.

Four stages of black walnuts from freshly fallen to already eaten by squirrels.

The tree that the walnuts fell from.

Wally's Second Look--The Fungus Among Us