Planting Time in Bay City

Spring is springing up all over the place around here. Daffodils have been up for a couple of weeks, tulip poplars and the forsythia are blooming. We're starting to see crappie fishermen in the creeks. And the Bay City General Store is blowing the dust off and getting ready for its spring opening. The first thing you see when you walk in our old 1915 store is this seed cabinet. It can be a painful experience for parents with young kids - they are eye level with all sorts of colorful vintage candies. Each drawer is filled with all the candies and novelties from your childhood - Sugar Babies, Milk Duds, Candy Buttons, wax bottles filled with sugar water, candy necklaces, Pixy Stix, candy cigarettes (yes they still make them - can you believe it?) BB Bats, Bazooka bubblegum, Tootsie Pops, taffy and circus peanuts. Does it get any better than that? While the munchkins are drooling over the candy selection hopefully parents will be drooling over the new spring merchandise - nature inspired plates and serving dishes just perfect for that next tea party or gathering on your patio or porch, nests and eggs of all sizes, baskets blooming with forsythia, bluebirds sitting on glass cloches............well you just need to come see for yourself. Oh did I mention red wax lips????????????????????? That makes it worth the scenic drive right there. Hope to see you soon!

I have a bad habit of hanging onto things for fear of ruining it when I try to be creative. This wooden chest for silverware was just such an example. I have had it forever. It didn't bother me to rip the insides out of it, although it was not as easy as I thought it would be. Didn't bother me to paint it with gesso. Then the creative process was ready to begin. And it sat, and sat and sat............then it came to me - a chest for art supplies! Then a theme of birds and nests began to emerge. I am really pleased with the way it turned out and now wonder what the heck took me so long. I lined the inside lid with cork, made an accordion folder out of a decorative folder and tacked it inside. Now I'm filling it with flotsam and jetsam from my art stash.

Best of Both Worlds

As I mentioned in a previous post, I like things with drawers but I failed to mention how much I love old postcards. So I'll say it here - I love old postcards! One of my favorite memories as a child is playing with a shoebox full of old postcards in my Granny's basement. Never knew what happened to those - in that same basement - old typewriters too! At a recent auction my husband discovered an old oak filing cabinet - a treasure enough by itself. A peek inside the top drawer of this old file cabinet revealed lots of old postcards - all of the drawers were filled with old postcards from all over the world dating back to the early 1900s. And someone had done the tedious work of cataloguing all of these postcards by country, city, state, and subject. Long story short - we came home with the filing cabinet and all of the postcards. I could not wait to dig into all of these treasures. This story does not have a happy ending.........at some point in time the cabinet sat in some water and you know how well old paper holds up once it gets wet or damp. It doesn't and these were no exception. Someone's precious collection that took years to gather and months to organize is ruined. What a heartbreak! I'm a silver lining kind of person so I'm enjoying all of the cards found in the top drawer - they managed to escape the underwater tour.
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World Travels

Back in the Day

Thought I'd show you a few of my favorite things - old typewriters, things with lots of cubbyholes and drawers, old cabinet cards and all things sepia. One of the old cabinet cards is my Papa wearing what I hope was his christening gown. What you can't see is what all this stuff is sitting on -- an old casket maker's chest from England! I'll have to show you a photo of the inside one day -- it is just the neatest chest for someone who likes little drawers and cubbyholes. When we bought it we knew there were a few items in the little drawers but we had no idea what was in store for us when we got it home. It was heavy, very heavy, but that is just us. We go to an auction, flea market, yard sale or whatever - we look around and manage to buy the heaviest item there. But I digress. In order to get this chest in our house we had to set it on the deck with our tractor, put it on a floor dolly and roll it into the house. Once inside we started poking around in the little drawers and my husband said there sure seems to be lots of wasted space in this chest. WRONG! There were hidden cubby holes throughout this chest and they were filled with old carpenter's tools and ephemera. That's how we found out it was a casket maker's chest from England. For us it was our Antique Roadshow find! That's one of my greatest fears - to be watching the Antique Roadshow and have someone show up with the ugliest vase only to find out it's worth $40,000 and when the appraiser asks where they found it, they say they bought it for a quarter at a little old general store in Bay City, IL!!!! My store! ARRGHHHHHHHHHH! Because most days I have no clue as to what I am doing but I'm sure having fun doing it.
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I thought I'd give you a bird's eye view of downtown Bay City, which in reality is pretty much all of Bay City. What looks like the Red Roof Inn is the Bay City General Store and Lodging. If you look to the right of the photo you will see my commute to work - we live on the hill. Traffic can be brutal at times. This is our little slice of paradise, us and about 18 other people. We've had a population explosion in the last 10 years - when we moved here there were only 9 people. Is this what they call urban sprawl? We absolutely love it here on the banks of the Ohio River but it is not for everyone. The closest gallon of milk is 12 miles away. People that come in the store ask me if I get bored living here in the middle of nowhere and I just have to laugh. There is always something going on around here whether it is watching for the eagles to come fishing in the river, waiting for the deer to make their daily trek through the backyard, listening to the piliated woodpecker searching for dinner, or dodging the hummingbirds as they swarm in for their sip of nectar. And the river - you never know what you might spy on the river - countless barges towing commodities up and down the river, snowbirds taking their yachts to the sunny climes of the Gulf of Mexico, the vagabonds with their canoes loaded down with supplies hoping to make it to New Orleans..........never a dull moment in Bay City.
Hope y'all will come see us this year!

Bird's Eye View