Yard Sale

We're having a yard sale tomorrow and Saturday with our neighbors who happen to be our in-laws.  So we have advertised a multi-family yard sale.  Yeah, sort of a multi-family thing.

The thing is, when we moved here a little over a year ago, I cleaned out all my junk before we moved.  I did not want to move junk, plus we had no room to house junk.  In Blue Ridge, where we lived for almost seven years, our house was large enough to hold lots and lots of junk.  Here, not so much.  I didn't have a sale up there, but I donated several truck loads of items to the Blue Ridge Humane Society Thrift Shop.  Lots of clothes and household items that I hoped could be sold to help finance a new shelter.

My precious dog Presley was adopted from the Blue Ridge Humane Society.  She has been an unexpected blessing in our lives.  I had not had a dog since we moved to the mountains and until she came into our lives, I had forgotten just how much joy a dog brings to our lives.  Even sweetie pie, grumpy and gruff most of the time, has fallen in love with Presley and is her number one late night walker.

Anyway, the only junk I moved was a lot of Christmas stuff, so I have cleaned that out.  And tons of weird lamps.  I don't remember these lamps, I think sweetie pie must have picked them up somewhere.  He's been a grumpy helper, but he has been suffering from a sinus infection.  All week long.  He doesn't suffer in silence, bless his heart.

The one bad thing about a yard sale is the terrible early morning start time.  We are not morning people.  I know, the early bird gets the worm, and all that, but we stay up late.  We are late night people.  Quite frankly, I do go to estate sales every so often, but I refuse to stand in line or heaven forbid, wait all night to be first in line.  There is nothing I want or need that bad to do all that.  Surprisingly, I have wandered into estate sales around nine or tenish and found treasures without the grabbing mentality some people exhibit.

We sell mostly furniture now since we closed our shop in Blue Ridge and do not have booths anywhere at this time.  It is hard to find decent furniture to re-sell at an estate sale because the price is usually higher than we can sell it, after painting or refinishing it.  We buy mostly through our pickers around the country or at auctions.  Recently though, auction prices have been inching higher.  Good for the economy, bad for re-selling.

We hope to sell some of our junk and make a few dollars this weekend.  Sweetie pie wants some new hunting gear and I want to buy Rick Hutto's new book.  I can't wait to read it!

Pine Trees

I love trees, not just pine trees.  I hate to see trees cut down.  When we lived in Blue Ridge, my shop was on a main road to a lumber yard and daily I would see logging trucks full of hardwoods with huge tree trunks that must have been hundreds of years old.  That made me sad.  I wonder if those loggers replanted the areas they cut down.  Hmmm.

Alright, back to pine trees.  Huge, soaring pine trees are all around me, except around the small house that was my father-in-law's.  As he grew older, he became scared of pine trees, knowing they could fall on his house.  So he had every single pine tree on his property cut down.  Every single one.  At least there are plenty of pines on my daily walk.

Some folks don't like pine trees.  They are messy, oozing pine sap, and do tend to fall on cars and roofs with the slightest provocation.  Springtime in Georgia brings the dreaded pine pollen to millions of allergy sufferers.  I'm sure there are more negatives, but that's all I can come up with right now.

On the flip side, pine trees are a renewable resource and tree farming is big business.  Talented musician, conservationist, and tree farmer Chuck Leavell has a great web-site with many articles about his love of the land and trees.  I admire that he uses his fame to teach others about conservation. 

When I see pine trees in yards, I immediately start looking for bags of pine straw.  Growing up, my mother would cruise through neighborhoods looking for pine straw that had been raked up, bagged up, and taken to the curb for disposal.  She could spot a likely stash blocks away.  Back then, many people did not reuse their own pine straw, but we did.  Many, many times, she would screech to a halt and jump out to check the bags.  If it was mostly pine needles and not mixed with leaves or trash, she would toss the bags in the back of our Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser station wagon.  My brother and I would roll our eyes when she made us get out to help or to run up and ask the homeowner if we could take the pine straw.

Funny now, that I when I drive through neighborhoods with lots of pine trees, I still look for those bags, sitting at the curb.  Nowadays, I rarely see discarded pine straw.  People reuse their own and if you don't have pine trees, you have to buy the bales of pine straw.  But I keep looking!

Spreading pine straw is an art.  You can not just drop a bale on the ground and kick it around.  A true spreader knows you take sections and gently shake the pine needles apart so they fall around your prized shrubbery just so.  I'll admit, when I see lawn maintenance guys spreading pine straw, I watch to make sure they are doing it right, even if it is not my yard. 

If you ask most people which tree is their favorite, most will say an oak or a dogwood or a maple.  All are beautiful, especially in the fall.  But I still like the scrubby, ole pine tree.

Welcome!

Welcome to my blog, Pine Trees & Random Morning Glories!  I am excited to start this now although I have been thinking about it for months.  I chose this name for my blog because I have lived most of my life under and around majestic pine trees.  I love pine trees, but random morning glories that appear in odd places make me smile.  On my daily walk, showy, white morning glories pop out in the most unusual places, like unexpected blessings. 

My morning walk with my dog Presley is my time to turn off and tune out.  I walk without a cell phone or music in order to enjoy my surroundings.  I listen to the sounds of nature while I mull over my latest writing or my latest read.  I don't like to talk, other than to my dog, so I am a solitary walker in the mornings.  I wave and greet my neighbors, but other than discussing the weather, the latest deer sightings, or Presley,  we do not dawdle. 

It was on my daily walk that I discovered the random morning glories.  Early this past spring, I noticed something white along the asphalt road.  I assumed it was trash as this woodsy area is a late night parking and what-have-you spot.  There are no houses close to this stretch of road.  Litter is dumped out with no respect to the surroundings.  As I approached the lone, white item embedded among grass and weeds, I realized it was a single, white morning glory blossom straining toward the spring sunshine.  I smiled.

I hope you will continue to read my blogs and let me know what you think.  I am an aspiring author, trying to get my novel published.  It is still a work in progress, according my one of my first readers, so I will be working on it while writing my next story as well as this blog.  Also, I am about to start a part-time job, the first time in years I have worked for someone other than myself.  And, my sweetie pie and I still have our own antique business.  Whew! Better go for now...