a Vintage Green

Thursday, May 17, 2018

What Is Blooming This Year

What is Blooming Now?

First tea outside and then... (well the carnations and vintage Japan egg cup with little rabbit didn't quite match today's theme)...

Happy Birthday Gail, always thinking of you on your special day. Hugs.

Yellow Rose opened this morning.

Walked around the front and back yard yesterday to gather photos of blossoms and fresh spring growth for today's post.

Yellow poppy

Peonies almost ready to bloom.

Rose buds showing their colour.

Orange Azalea

Blueberries in blossom

Bachelor Buttons, Orange and Yellow Poppies

Lush fern - comes back each year

A peek back to May 11, 2017 garden progress here.

Wednesday DGS mowed the backyard lawn and finished the front yard lawn today. Yesterday I weed-eated the very tall grass and weeds behind the sheds plus pulled weeds in my very small raspberry area.

I haven't cleaned my small garden beds yet - but Peaches has certainly dug some deep holes looking for rats in the lovely soil.

Today, after school pickup, I stopped at the Laity Farm Spring Plant Sale.

Picked up Alyssum and Lobelia. Planted them after supper. The Rosemary and Dusty Miller made it through the winter. I am keeping the planters very simple this year.

Thank you for visiting today.

Hugs

Joy

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Thursday, May 10, 2018

Heirloom Lilacs

Many years ago a friend from work gave me a rooted dark purple flowering lilac - heirloom - from her wonderfully classic garden.

It has managed to thrive. Its perfume fills the yard and drifts through the open windows and doors.

Taken near dusk before the rain.

See you next week.

Hugs

ps (below)from rodaleorganiclife

Lilacs flower on old wood, so they should be pruned immediately after flowering, or else next year's flower buds will be cut off. Remove two-thirds of the suckers and shoots near ground level, keeping a third to mature into future flowering branches. Cut larger stems from the center to allow sun and air circulation to avert disease. Sever awkward limbs to create a well-balanced, rounded shrub. If the lilac is grafted, always remove any shoots arising from the rootstock, below the graft union, to maintain the desired cultivar's flowers. Deadheading spent flowers keeps seeds from forming but is tedious and not absolutely necessary.

Thank you Rodale for blogging about care of heirloom lilacs.

Thursday, May 3, 2018

1920's Era Cabinet Doors With Divided Lights

A young man with a storage shed filled with his various vintage and older collections (great junk) had a garage sale at his parent's home last weekend.

We weren't the first to arrive, there were lots of spaces empty on the tables and tarps on the grass. He had made a rain shield by attaching ropes to one end to his truck and the other to his parent's garage door and built two U shape frames and draped tarps over the frames to keep his tables and furniture dry.

Two multi-paned windowed cabinet doors were left - flaking white paint, rot on the bottom of one door, missing multin pieces, doors embellished with old spider webs holding bits and pieces of dried out 'things'.

Below is the 'work in progress' .

DH has worked on making these windowed cabinet doors structurely solid. Vacuuming was involved for the various flakes and messes from the doors. My job on this project has been to find things and clean.

Didn't take a 'before' of the really dirty glass and blizzard of flaking paint.

Repairs to the individual (divided glass) lights - 9 mitered muntins (short molding pieces) were needed, 5 were missing in addition to the 4 little pieces that fell off one cabinet door as we moved the doors. Picked them up from the grass fortunately.

The doors were most likely originally built-in cabinet doors for a dining room back in the days when carpenter's made built-in furniture. The doors are probably from the 1920's era and are probably from a craftsman style house. They were most likely custom made in a sash and door company, made out of Douglas Fir, in British Columbia.

One glass door pull was left on a door (and it is so rusted on that it doesn't want to leave). Love the age/use patina of this piece.

'Little pieces of wood that may be useful sometime in the future' were out in the shed and were brought in to see if they would be the right size and depth for repairs. Worked.

Cut to length and mitered the muntins (the little pieces) were each attached with a single nail. That allows the individual pieces of glass to be removed if 4 muntins are removed in case the glass breaks.

The bottom on one cabinet door needed glued and clamped and reinforced because the doors had been stored in the heat/damp of a shed for so long that the original glue had disintegrated.

While the doors were stored a shed they did absorb moisture and started to rot. This repair has been started but is not yet finished.

A top piece of wood that had to be removed was part of the original structure - right side of the above door (but cut flat now). More work is needed before this cabinet door can be re-purposed.

Mystery doors to be made useful again.

More to come.

Below - built in cabinets from a 1916 Sears Kit House on Flicker.

Perhaps the two we are working on were doors for dining room built-in storage.

Our project is not finished so I will either add photos later or write another post on how the repaired divided light cabinet doors look when they are re-purposed.

Thank you for visiting today.

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