Barn Finds and Kristi's Cocoon

Hello! How was your weekend? We had quite an interesting one. First off Kristi is cleaning out the barn. When they moved here they brought a lot of things and put them in the barn to store. She's decided that a lot of those things can go. I also had moved a whole storage unit of my mother's things into the barn so she wouldn't have to pay the monthly fee. And not to mention our own things that needed to go into the trash or to a charity shop. I was put in charge of going through boxes and bins and sorting what to dump or what to keep or what to donate. I found plenty of my own treasures that needed to be rescued.. the plate below for one. I'd thrown this on a pottery wheel, trimmed it, bisque fired it, glazed it and painted the design with cobalt oxide then high fired it. I'm so happy to have found this again!

We also spent many hours enjoying the summer days on the deck, the hydrangea is coloring up nicely!

Love these colors!

The Jasmine is in bloom but I haven't smelled it yet, I think it needs to warm up first.

The Begonia is getting bigger by the day.

The yellow Hollyhock is blooming up it's very tall stalk, I've had to put a black bamboo (Kristi cut from our own plant) stake in the pot to hold it upright.

My miniature rose has given us 2 blooms.. the plant is not extremely happy, but hopefully will do better as the summer progresses. The blooms are only as big as a 50 cent piece.

Hanging basket update. LOL!

Staring up at the clouds in the sky. Life is rough.

The boys asked grandpa if they could ride the mower and of course he said yes so they took turns going around our circular driveway. Around and round.

My spot in my chair and comfy footstool and Buddy our faithful watchdog.

Back to work. Kristi found a bag of our 4-H flags and ribbons and this printed piece of fabric. I designed our logo and had t-shirts printed for the kids while they showed their goats at the county fair. I hand lettered the name in calligraphy, drew the goats and Vista House.. and the 4-H logo. Wow.. in 1983.

I bought Army surplus wooden footlockers and painted them for us to use at the fair - we took our milking supplies, brushes and such in this trunk. I must say that our stall at the fair was quite well set up with fresh straw on the ground and straw bales for us to sit on and I was very proud.

I re-found this vintage oil lantern which I brought in and cleaned the dust off.

I was SO happy to also find this bread board which I wondered where it had gotten to. It's a 19th century English antique and hand-carved. I scrubbed it good but now I need to oil it. I wish I knew how to get rid of the dark stain on the bottom.. any suggestions beside sanding it off?

I love the hand carved words on top.

I went through one bin of my mother's things and on the top was a plethora of kitchen utensils and underneath those were a lot of sewing notions. Needles, sewing machine needles, and a ton of zippers and bias tape and threads. Unfortunately a lot of that went into the garbage can as the needles were rusty and the fabric things did not smell too good after being in the barn so long. But I did find a lot of things I wanted to keep, I may photograph some of those gems and share those in a future post.

More deck enjoyment.

Antique cars were moved out of the barn so she could go through things. My goodness.. we cannot be accused of minimalism. An episode of "Hoarders" might be more like it. But Kristi is trying to organize and declutter and make the space useful again. What a girl!

My volunteer Sweet William.

The garden and potted plants in front of the garden shed.

A zoom up into the wild cherry tree.

Story time: Kristi found a cocoon in April while weeding around a fern in the front garden. She researched what it might be and came up with a Luna Moth or a Giant Silk Moth. She put it in a plastic container for a few months and then got a butterfly enclosure until it emerged. Yesterday was the big day! Isn't this something?

Kristi wanted to keep it but she realized that it would be the best thing to let it free as it only lives for one week and it's job is to mate in that week before it passes away. This was the freeing ceremony. Hayden got to hold it before we placed it in the "wild".

Then Hayden handed it off to Caleb. I love this photo.

Then Kristi placed it on the fern. Isn't it amazing?

Yesterday son Shawn hung up the lights around the gazebo and Dayle hung the new patriotic buntings that I ordered from Vermont Country Store. Ta-dah.. ready for the 4th of July!