Wednesday's Wanderings...........

I snapped the jars in the store room a few days back and can see I have room to place a few more on the shelf.  I am inspired to go into the store room/bird room/old piano room/winter plant room and whatever else it has been and do some rearranging and cleaning.  It is nice to have a room where you can just put things and decide what to do with them later.  The problem is that I need to get in gear and decide.  I have my parents things that I just couldn't throw away that I wanted to blend in with the house.  I know the old trunk can just go upstairs and store loose photos and things that also need to be reorganized. I have a glass display case that my dad had made for displaying his polishes stones.  It isn't a great piece of furniture but I could put antique things in it.

I have a desk that was a kids college desk that I am going to put on the curb.  I know that if it doesn't get picked up by someone in town for recycle in their home that I could burn it.  I have another tall cupboard that my dad made that I could be putting things inside it if I get the other furniture things out of the way.  Spring is driving me with a lot of clear light outside so I might get things clean up in there.

It isn't a pretty display but it makes it easy for us to get to our new dishes.  I cleared out the things that filled the cubby in the kitchen and now will use these dishes with ease.  I see the Pfaltzgraff company has similar dishes for sale at Walmart.  They have a pattern of smaller flowers on their cups and plates.  They also have a pattern that is decorated with the same colors but the plates are square with squares of colors decorating the outside of the plate edge.  It might be fun to mix in a couple of smaller bowls or buy a square plate for a serving platter.

I have brought these medium sized starts out into the dining room window and away from the artificial light.  I was remarking to my wife that big stores really want to sell everything but they don't take good care of their living products.

Walmart has new violets in for sale at the spring time and they sit in bunches inside the store or outside in the greenhouse area where it is cold.  Everytime I go through the  garden area I can see the visible weakening of the potted plants as the leaves are turn brown and the flowers are shriveling from too much water or too little water. It is the same way with orchids as they come in from greenhouse in beautiful shape, they put high prices on them, and then you can see them die every time you go back to the store.

This hardy geranium has decided to bloom in the new longer days of light. It had smaller bud heads before but now they are almost normal size. I won't be able to put these guys outside until May.

This old tree in the front of our house is really a mess.  An arbor person would have a heyday trimming and correcting all of its flaws.  It keeps dropping down dead parts that lean here and there through the tree.  Age wise it has almost reached its life span for being a good looking specimen.  I have been here over 30 years and it was a big tree when I first moved to the property.  Now it has seen so many storms and grown so big that it has become a danger to my house.  I will have to remove it but not this year.








We went to see The Monuments Men yesterday and we were sure glad that we had. It was a group of art minded men during WW II, assigned to go out and try to protect or find the art works that Hitler and Stahl were stealing as fast as they could. The movie  is closing in a lot of theaters this week but it really was well done as a movie and were glad to catch it.  Some of the recreated places that the men were traveling through were the same locations that my dad had traveled as a 22 year old soldier.  The Remagen bridge area was where my dad was crossing the Rhine. He was one of the first to cross the bridge.  He could of told them about the authenticity of the tents in the snow during the battle of the bulge.  He was shipped into Belgium after that country was retaken from Germany and the artworks shown in the movie that had been stolen were already stolen from that country before he arrived.

The monuments men later found a lot of the items in salt caves scattered all over Germany, being stored for the great art museum that Hitler had planned to build.  Russians took over Germany for a while and they removed a lot of work that the Americans couldn't rescue before them. The Russians just recently, five or more years ago, started showing some of the works that they took. They have no interest in returning any of them to their owners.  In the news this past year, a German citizen had died and it was revealed that he had two apartments full of the works that he was keeping in hiding.

The one thing that fascinated me most was to see the radios that they were using in the war and shown in today's movie.  My dad was a radio man that carried one along with the leaders in charge both during battle and also out with scouts who were out in front of the battle lines.  They showed that same radio in the movie in many scenes.  It had glass tubes in it and my dad complained that they were always having to replace them as he carried it, walking most time and sometimes in a jeep.  He said that half the time the radio was down because it was too fragile to be in battle.  It was so great to finally see that radio that I had heard about 55 years ago when I was a kid.

Another spring break day and the day is a non planned day. We will rest, do odd jobs, and then may go do something and then maybe not.  Our light snow is melting this morning and it will be wet outside for a while. It is very windy and cold out there. We still need moisture.  Thanks for stopping by today and stay safe.