Standing the test of time.

  While excavating the area for the Bog Garden, Son has been uncovering a lot of "treasures" and a lot of "non-treasures" (also known as junk).  When Hurricane Katrina pushed through here years ago, she picked up tons of sand from the beach front miles to our south.  All of that lovely sand was deposited in places like our yard.  This was fine by me as I would much rather have mounds of sand than washed out ruts. In places, the sand was piled up higher than six feet.  Now, years and years later, the sand has leveled to become part of the landscape.  One particularly deep area is where Michael decided the Bog Garden should be so he is digging through not only sand but lots of stuff!

  We were tickled to see just how many plastic yard ornaments were under the sand.  Dozens of three foot tall red and white candy canes were pulled from the area.  These were considered junk and tossed on the trash pile to be hauled to the dump.  Thousands of shards of stained glass were also found and painstakingly collected to be recycled as art pieces.  Stained glass work has always held me spellbound and I can hardly wait to begin creating with these hurricane shards.  Then he found a treasure.....a true treasure.

  A crazy as it may sound, he found a glass canning jar with a zinc lid still intact.  It amazed us that the lid had held tight all of these years underground.  The fun part was that the jar still contained whatever was preserved inside from years ago. Granted the stuff had become a gelatinous, brown liquidy mess but it was still tightly bound inside the jar.  Not being one to waste a perfectly good canning jar (hmmm?), I unsealed the jar to find a substance that was not at all what I expected. I figured that whatever that stuff was, it had to be quite smelly by this time.  It was not.  It smelled highly of blackberry jam!  (No, I did not eat it!)  

  After a bit of scrubbing, the jar and lid came incredibly clean and will soon become a container for buttons or beads in the craft room.  "Waste not, want not."  comes to mind.  I figure if the jar withstood a hurricane of Katrina's strength and then ten years buried in salty sand, it has a story to tell and should be added to the collection of weird and wonderful things housed within the Little Bayou House.

What an improvement!

A great improvement was made to the appearance of the old highchair in yesterday's post.  The addition of my sweet granddaughter turned the chair into the most elegant of thrones to ever be sat upon.  Of course, she could have sat upon any old chair and still been radiant but to me, the old highchair seemed almost jubilant to be holding a little one after all of these years.  Mary Ruth is the fourth generation of babies to use the chair and of those four, three of the little ones were named "Ruth".  Of course, it would have been a tad strange if the fourth was named that since he is my son (also known as, Mary Ruth's daddy!)

While chowing down on some of my homemade chicken and broccoli soup, Mary Ruth was steadily grasping for anything and everything that was within her reach. Since this kitchen has not seen a little one in quite some time, it is not exactly "baby-proof".  My sweet daughter-in-law was forever apologizing for little hands clasping onto the curtains, ladles and wooden spoons.  I just smiled and told her that as long as Mary Ruth was not in danger, she could play with anything she wanted.  It bothered me not that something might accidentally be broken.  This was learning play and I was not about to squelch that in the least.  Finally, my son found the perfect toys!  He handed his sweet little one a homegrown grapefruit and lemon.  Then a few canning lid rings were placed on the tray.  These few items kept the little girl quite entertained for some time!  We decided that she was learning the fine art of home canning.  Perhaps with the lemon and grapefruit, she was going to make a fine marmalade!

It sure feels good to have a little one in the Little Bayou House after all of these years.  Mary Ruth being here has breathed life back into the old place!  Yep, I do believe this has been quite an improvement!