For Jan, who's always asking about Squeeky

Hey! Who let the chickens out? They are in my garden again. Look at this. Dirt all over the place!

Napoleon? Can you please keep your girls in line? Do they have to make such a mess. I know you're a bantie rooster and most of the hens are twice as big as you ,but you've got those big spurs on your feet. Do some serious @$$ kicking and get them under control.

...and where is Squeeky? My little bantie who always thinks the sky is falling? She's all broody again, but this time she's "setting" her own eggs so I guess I will leave her alone and let her try. Last year she just wanted to sit on all the big eggs and would never leave the nest. What a problem child she is. Why wouldn't she want to be outside, in the beautiful weather, with the rest of the flock. Look at her! Such a pretty little, confused chicken, but I love her.

And I leave you with this...

Why did the chewing gum cross the road?
Because it was stuck to the chicken.

It's that kind of day....

California Groovin'

This is Bart. He is one of our four Nubian wethered goats. He's quite the gentleman. When I stop to see them, usually every evening, he's the first one to come over and "talk". He was being exceptionally sweet yesterday. We always say "Hello." by touching noses and then he starts sniffing me. It's his way of making sure that I am who he thinks I am. It's like he says...
"Ah! It's farmlady. She's wearing that wonderful shirt that has the shinny buttons and the Jessica McClintock perfume. I know her. She is...(sniff, sniff...) my favorite person besides The Prospector, who feeds me. I like Farmlady very much." Then, I start rubbing his neck and tell him what a wonderful goat he is and, for once, I caught the "look" with my camera. When I start rubbing and talking, he closes his eyes and gets all groovy. It's so cute. He's such a lady's man.

The garden looks so nice right now and I haven't had to do anything. Spring is just a wonderful time of year. We don't have to water or prune. We don't have to fertilize or plant anything..., yet. It's a time for enjoyment. We watch the bushes and trees bud out and the bulbs that we planted in the fall push up through the damp earth and blossom into lovely flowers, some of which, I had forgotten I had planted. Bulbs are like "surprises" in the Spring. I have white tulips that I didn't remember planting..., but here they are, opening up in the wine barrels and looking all lacey and lovely.
The French Pussywillow is ready to be picked and the alyssum is all over the place. Some of the alyssum has grown down onto the walkway. Cutter has decided to use these soft fragrant flowers to rest in after he wears himself out running around the yard with Carl. He look so cute sitting in this shady spot watching Carl. He waits for a sign that it's time to play again. Carl thinks it's funny that Cutter is sitting in the flowers, but he forgets that he use to get a drink in the birdbath and then lay right down in the middle of my flower bed when he was a youngster. He prefers to sun himself on the porch now that he's a big, grown up dog. They are both enjoying the beautiful weather.
As I sit here in the warm California sunshine and think of all the beauty around me, I remember Robert Louis Stevenson's small poem that says....
"The world is so full of a number of things,
I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings."

I think that sums up how we feel, here, today....

Vintage Thursday

Both of these plates are Bavarian. The yellow plate above has hand painted yellow roses on it and gold trim. The mark on the back says Rosenthal. There is a signature on the front, in the drawing, but I can't read the name. The plate is in beautiful condition and has no crazing or chips.
The plate below is dark orange fading to yellow in the middle with hand painted daisy like flowers . It has a gold trim around the scalloped edge. The mark on the back is a circle with the letters JHR inside. The words Alice and Bavaria are above and below the circle . Another word , in script, "Favorite" is on the back but stamped in a different place.I cannot find any information on this mark.

Both of these plates are 8" in diameter and in very good condition. I bought them this week at our local thrift shop. They were $3.50 each. I wanted some plates to use in the plate rack on the wall in my livingroom. Something more like Springtime. These seem to go well. They should carry us into Summer. Sometimes you just need a little change to make a room look brighter. Old plates are wonderful for this and often very inexpensive,especially if you find them before they get to an "Antique" store.
Please go to Colorado Lady's blog for a list of other folks who love vintage or antique things. Some come with interesting stories too.

The Irish are Laughing Today.

Some may say the glass is half empty...


Some may say the glass is half full.

But the Irish will forever say...

"ARE YOU GONNA DRINK THAT?"

An Irish Wish
May there always be work for your hands to do,
May your purse always hold a coin or two.
May the sun always shine warm on your windowpane,
May a rainbow be certain to follow each rain.
May the hand of a friend always be near you,
And may God fill your heart with gladness to cheer you.

Happy St. Patrick's Day everyone.

Thanks to Rick Luquette for his collection of Irish sayings.
 

Two books and a Clipboard

I was thinking that I have been "puppydogging" all of you to death lately, so today will be a "no puppy" picture day.
Yesterday I had some errands to do in town. I have been looking for an old Johnson Bros. bread&butter plate for a friend ,so I stopped by the thrift stores in town to see if I could get lucky and find one before it got to an antique store and the price quadrupled. No luck with the plate but I did find a few cool things.
The Elbe clipboard is in perfect condition. I may just keep it for it's intended purpose or I may "alter" it. The Masonite board is dark and very beautiful, no chips or marks, and the clip works great. I don't know why but I LOVE CLIPBOARDS. Call me crazy. They are so useful and some old ones are really beautiful. This one was $1.50.

This book was in it's third printing in 1946; the year they made the movie with Gregory Peck and Jennifer Jones. It's a Forum Book Motion Picture Adition( Yes, that's how they spelled "addition".). I can't wait to read it and compare it to the movie ,to see if they did right by Niven Busch's book. The book doesn't open with the same words as the movie.... Do you remember?...
"Deep among the lonely sun-baked hills of Texas, the great and weather beaten stone still stands. The Comanches call it 'Squaw's Head Rock.' Time cannot change its impassive face nor dim the legend of the wild young lovers who found heaven, and hell, in the shadows of the rock. For when the sun is low and the cold wind blows across the desert, there are those who still speak of Pearl Chavez, the half-breed girl from down along the border, and of the laughing outlaw with whom she had kept a final rendezvous, never to be seen again. And this is what the legend says:'A flower, known nowhere else, grows from out of the desperate crags where Pearl vanished...Pearl, who was herself a wild flower, sprung from the hard clay, quick to blossom...and early to die."
Oh it's all so romantic and tragic. I love stories like this.

The other book is by one of my favorite poets. This book is older than me (being published in 1941) and in better shape. It's not antique but it's definitely VINTAGE. Ogden Nash was a very cleaver and funny poet who told folks things that they didn't want to hear in a way that made them listen and laugh. He made up words so they would rhyme and he wrote silly two line poems that , I thought, were hysterical.
"God in his wisdom made the fly
And then forgot to tell us why."
This was a man who said "Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker." I would like to have met Mr. Nash. I have to imagine that he was as funny, in person, as he was with his verse. If you need a good laugh, buy yourself one of his books of poetry. It will make your day.
Both of these books cost me $2.00. I'll keep looking for the plate but I thought this was an inexpensive and successful trip to the thrift store. What do you think?

I told you so.

Did I not tell you what the really motives were for my sister's visit?

Was it the wonderful new restaurant on Main Street with the great homemade salsa and chips? The Antique stores? The laughing over how we seem to make shorter trips downtown and how the menus have "smaller" writing? How life is going by so fast and every morning wakes us with a new ache in our bodies?..a new hitch in our hips?

Was it the beautiful walk Sunday morning in the warm sunshine and a cat named Annibel, who followed us up to Maggie's resting place? The green, grass covered hills and the loveliness of a California Spring?
Probably, all of this. She left with a bigger smile on her face and a promise to come back soon...
...but mostly ,that first photo says it all.