Smoke them if you have them.............

John Horton was a pipe smoker and this container would have contained pouches of loose tobacco.  Note the holes in the can to allow the tobacco to breath or to encourage people to buy it because you could smell the contents.  I have a baby quilt that was made with tobacco pouch cloth by John and Iva Horton. The pouch cloth was blended in with different colors. all small squares. John did the sewing of the squares to make the top on his treadle sewing machine and Iva did the quilting.

Another view of the can.

A short report on how my new starts of the violet slips are doing.  I have a plant light on them night and day and you can see how green the foliage has become now.  I find it to be interesting to see that they now need to be repotted  again as there are multiple plants in these pots.  I find there are seven different plants in just these three pots.  The red pieces are dropping from the geranium blooms which sit on a shelf above them.

I am subbing in the Spanish classroom today.  I have had a lot of Spanish but never used it in conversation in a very successful way.  It will prove to be an interesting experience.  I am hoping they all have busy work and I can post comments on blogs part of the day.

I see we have a snow storm and maybe blizzard weather conditions on the way for the next few days.  I was just getting use to all the extreme cold.  Now we can add flying white stuff to our mix.  I saw a suggested amount of 9-10 inches by Tuesday evening.

Thanks for stopping by my blog today.  I will try to catch up a little on reading all of yours now that I am almost better.   A little touchy in the stomach department yet and still very tired.  Old age maybe is creeping in to greet me.  Thanks............

Sunday morning......

A thinned down version of coffee with a piece of pumpkin bread tasted good today.  I caught up on my garden magazines today being three months behind at looking at them. 

Thanks for stopping by..........

Seeing red.......

We gave this bulb to our neighbor for her December birthday.  She was almost irritated with me because it just looked like it was going to turn out to be a dud nonbloomer. She showed it to me and acted like I was suppose to fix it.   Well she was worried for nothing as the bulb did start to shoot out it's stems and buds.  Patience is not one of her personal qualities and I was glad it pulled through.  I was concerned that a severe scolding was going to take place if it didn't perform.

There is nothing wrong with your eyes, it is just a hair out of focus as the lighting was bad in the room.

Thanks for stopping by.........

Tin can alley......

More coffee cans to show. I don't understand why they would call it bakerized but maybe they thought back then that roasted was not as desirable. 

Another steel cut coffee from my own state of Iowa.  I suppose the grinding devices were made from steel.  I also had not thought of it before but most of the time back then it was sold as beans and wasn't ground into coffee like today.  I suppose these cans helped to convince people pre-ground coffee would be a good product to buy.

I am on day three of my forced diet of hot tea and crackers. I still have no desire for coffee but I am eating some food besides jello.  It warmed up above freezing today and that was a great thing. 

Thanks for stopping by..........

Monkeying around..........

Two  monkeys fighting over the coconuts.  The can is actually a little bucket and it doesn't hold 24 pounds.  It certainly had a very fancy decoration to draw your attention.

On the side panel you can see the naked boy taking his little bucket with him to the beach.

From some of the recipe suggestions, the coconut must have been pretty well dried out before one bought it.  It keeps saying in the directions to soak the product in warm milk before making your pie or cake.

Just another view of the monkeys having their little tug of war. 

Thanks for stopping by............

It's Folgers in your cup............

Who wouldn't want to buy this can of coffee with a graphic like this on the side?

There is a company that still exists today in Kansas City, downtown, that you can smell the roasting coffee beans as you drive by the building. I don't know if it is Folgers.

I had substitute taught on Monday and that night I picked up a stomach flu that wouldn't go away.  I try to blog ahead by a day but I am going to be blogging behind instead.  I haven't had a cup of coffee since I started my illness and when I do have my first cup,  I know I will be all better.

Thanks for stopping by.......

Can Collection.......

I have spoken of a couple who lived on a farm south of Murray.  They saved everything and their house seemed like a living history farm.  When they moved to town, my John and Iva connection had various old containers that they were throwing away.  I liked the colors and designs and they thought it strange that I wanted them.

As a series, I will blog each can, to show you what they look like more closely than in this still life. 

John and Iva have been gone for many years and I try visit their graves each year. Their furniture lives with me daily and sometime I dig out some things like this to review what I have. They had fours sons and one died in France in WW 2.  The other three sons are still alive.

  Of the three sons living I have contact with the one who is Loren Horton.  Sadly his wife Carol is suffering with liver cancer. They are actually step cousins, if I were trying to identify relationships, but to me they always have been John and Iva's kids. My Grandmother married into the family to Iva's brother. Their kids are probably in their early 80's now.
Loren was  the manager of the Des Moines Historical Building in downtown Des Moines.  He writes and publishes poetry and is still involved in things at the University of Iowa area.  His wife Carol sang professionally most of her life and churches still  hire her to sing. She is still in area performing choirs.

The cans will evolve in my blogs to come.  I am back to working at school as a sub so I am becoming busier.  So stretching out the cans will keep my material coming for  you.

Thanks for stopping by.........

Headers that I never used.......

As I crop photos to prepare them for posting I can see parts of a picture that would make a great header for the top of my blog.  The problem is that I have more headers than I need for a season unless I post them out of season.  Below are some long and narrows that I created to be headers but never used.  These came from my Maine 2010 folder.

Top of Cadillac mountain

 

Another view of Cadillac mountain

 

The rocky shoreline of Maine and Atlantic Ocean

White water of the waves coming in on shore

I am substitute teaching today at the high school.  I will be with the Industrial Tech Classes.  

Thanks for stopping by................

The jail bird escapes.............

Photo by guest artist Della Burgus

Inside and outside of the cage at the same time.  How does that work?  Actually Jack Sparrow escaped again today.  I looked in there while talking on the phone and he was just sitting up there, wishing he could get back into the cage.  Canola his mate is confused about this little escaping technique that he pulls and doesn't like him to leave her side.  On my Larry's Photo a Day I have more pictures of the total incident.

The cold is the news around here and it continues to be crippling most of the middle of the United States.  We will venture out today as we teach Sunday school.  The car has been starting regardless as to how cold it is so we should have no trouble.  

Thanks for stopping by and stay warm everyone.

Bling, cat and blooms.........

I found this wonderful idea for displaying Christmas balls in a book at the bookstore.  I wanted to buy it but I am waiting for it to go down in price one more time.  It had a lot of pages that I didn't want to own,  more that the very few ideas that I liked in the book. They were displaying various ornaments in the Ball canning jars..and I have lots of jars and lots of old Christmas stuff.

The above photos are manipulated together to give you a creative design.  Below is the original, only one, jar.

It was touch and go putting the first balls in there as I couldn't just drop them in there.  I lay it down on it's side and then filled it partially until I could sit the jar up and complete the filling.

I am in the basement putting away decorations and I opened a box of various objects. I found this ceramic cat planter.  There is a sleek black panther planter down there that I didn't bring upstairs. I collect these haphazardly but I didn't know this cat existed.

I shared another photo of my oxalis on my Photo a Day blog but I wanted you to see this one also.  The plant shoots out these blooms and they are so heavy that they drape down away from the main leaves.

Saturday is here and we are still cold.  I was out yesterday for a few hours taking a neighbor for a doctor's appointment.  It was really miserable to the most part but I did survive it. I bought good things at the store to eat while we are frozen inside.  We can eat pumpkin bread and drink coffee and tea for a few days now.

Thanks for dropping in on my blog.  I wish you all a good weekend..........and stay warm where ever you are.

Sansevieria planting...........

After my friend Doug gave me the three rocks I was inspired to plant them in my bonsai planter.  I searched over the plants that I already had as I didn't need to buy anything new and this is what I found. I don't know it's exact name but it does come from the sansevieria family of plants. I took it away form the side of two other plants and figure it will give it room to put out a new one again.

I was asked to come over to see my neighbors blooms on her amaryllis plant.  I took pictures but they were not open enough to make a good picture.  So I snapped a view of this one sitting next to it.  Tropical looking when it is so cold outside.

Austrian Pine

Balsam Pine

To balance out the warm photos I will give you two cold photos.  If it is around 69 F. degrees in the home and it is 13 degrees F. in the daytime that is a difference in  temperature of 54 degrees. When it drops another 12 degrees down to 0 which is -18 degrees C. , then tonight that will be a difference of 69 measurements on the scale. No wonder my furnace doesn't stop running.

Thanks for stopping by.......I may not have my math right up there so if you want to check it, go ahead.  I am too cold to do much right now.

Swan and rose..........

The old concrete swan seems to be swimming in snow.  I didn't get the rose trimmed back and it actually gives off a great sculptural design.

Thanks for stopping by................

Archived and reposting the past........

A Brave New Journey

I need to start painting again while I sill am able to touch brush onto canvas.  My wife and I have been asked to be in a show in a few months and I need some new work to be done. It isn't a big time place or show but it is a public venue.  Della is in shows often but this would be my first in a very long time.

Where to go and what to paint is my dilemma.  I have done so many barns because it is a safe thing  for me to do. I am at the threshold of trying something new but what will happen I don't know. I have spent 35 years of instructing and watching others and I can paint in many mediums.  I just have to start........sometime.........somehow..........somewhere.

Thanks for keeping in touch with me.  I value your stopping by and hope that you are weathering through all the weather can put out for you.

Time to try out the train........

Many negatives involving this train set.  I can solve the problems but it will take more time than I have right now.   I quickly set it up to see if it was working and it sort of does work.
The dining room table is too small for the track.
It needs to be put down permanently on a board or I have to put rubber  bands between each track to hold the cheaply made connectors between each track piece.
The track needs to be polished up with a fine grained steel wool to aid in the connections of the engine to the track.
The cars are a pain to get onto the track.

I won't give up on this but I won't get it done for awhile.  I could see Barney and Button having a few accidental run through if I tried to spread it out on the floor.

It was fun, but I am going to put it away for a rainy day when I have a little more patience.

We ended up warming up enough on Monday to have thawing, but it was a cold thaw and we didn't loose much snow.  It actually snowed another inch the night before which cleaned up our old snow.  The rest of the week promises to be very cold.

Thanks for stopping by.........

Looking for a great bridge in Iowa.......

I need to take a picture of a bridge for a photo contest.  I almost got silly and tried to take shots of this one.  I know that I have some archived photos in files of Rockefeller bridges in Acadia National Park but I thought I should look for something new.  I live an  hour away from the bridges in Madison County but it is a high of 14 degrees around here.  It isn't going to warm up and the roads will be bad for some time.  I can see getting there and the cold and the snow wouldn't really be great for a backdrop for these historic covered bridges.  We have a mile long bridge near here also but it is so plain looking and I again will have to get out of the car and trudge through a lot of deep snow.  We will see how I will solve this problem.  I have 13 days to get something figured out for the entry.

A cheap, cheep shot of my artificial bird on a wreath before taking it to the basement.  We took our large tree down yesterday and I still need to tote the boxes to the basement.

Della and I were engaged to be married 26 years ago in December, I think on the 18th.  She gave me this hand crafted pillow for a present and I gave her a diamond ring.  I have to confess that she was surprised as we had not talked about any marriage plans up to that point. She did say yes and she hasn't told me yet that she wants to  change her mind.  She did all of the work by hand and it is a pillow of historic value of wonderful memories. DW says my math is wrong and she is  correct of course. It was 27 years ago, but I got the day right.

On our 25th wedding anniversary I gave her this lovely set of patio glasses made of plastic.


In case you think I was stupid,  I also gave her a very pricey ring.  The glasses were enhancement to the  ring. 



Thanks for stopping by and I hope you are all doing well.  Freezing rain and bad roads are on the menu for today.

Swaziland and snow.......

We help support a couple who are missionaries to Swaziland.  They have been our friends for years and they now live over in Africa working with the Children's Cup ministries.  Jerry and Karen help to feed children one meal a day and provide an hour or two of education to teach basic skills of reading and writing. A lot of the children are orphans and the aids epidemic is rampant throughout.  We were glad to see them back in November for a short visit before they returned to Africa.

I thought the stamp on the postcard was unique.  We are unable to ever send mail or packages to them as they most likely would be stolen.  I was surprised to see them sending out mail but they may have sent it with a carrier to another country to get it out. I guess there isn't much you can take from a postcard.

Snow sculptures remain as we have not seen any temperatures above 21 degrees F.  It doesn't look promising for next week either.  It is to get down to below zero the next few days, maybe even all next week.  I tune it out after while as it is just plane cold.

Thanks for stopping by on this Sunday.  I hope you get a good day for resting and that all is well with you.

The back of the clock..........

The clock backing was in three pieces and the one bracket standing vertically has a twin piece that I need to put back into position. The clock must have had an earlier repair job as I had to take out large rusty nails that held the brackets on the back.  They would not have been original to this clock.

Gluing and clamping the next piece to finish off the back.  The split here was created because of how they had used large nails to affix the other bracket.  I remove all of them.

With it glued and clamped, I had to put weight on the whole piece to keep it from buckling.  As you can see I grabbed some pretty high tech weights to hold it down.

Another view of the last procedure. The mat cutter is weighing down the other end so that is why there isn't any junk down there.

The other perpendicular piece is glued and placed in position.  Again the tablet helped to hold it down and the nails and glue bottle kept it standing vertically.

Everything is now glued back together.  I may use small brads to nail in from the back to reinforce the glued brackets. I hope I don't split it again.  The round bracket must have had a bell shaped piece to allow the clock to sound on the hour.

The clock's mechanical piece is probably not going to be fixable but I won't do much with it for now.  What you are seeing in the top of the clock at the bottom of the photo.  The face of the clock sat directly above the mechanism.

The restoration is on hold for now but I will keep you posted as I move on with the clock case and door.

The land of contrasts...........

A peaceful backyard in January 2011. It was 3 below degrees F. Wednesday night.

A peaceful backyard in June 2009.  It was probably 70 degrees F.  Some people say they would miss the changing seasons if they moved south to live year round. I would miss the lush growing season of spring and early summer otherwise,  I wouldn't miss it if I didn't have to live in it.

Thanks for stopping by one more time...............