ROSES AND TROPHIES AND A SUNNY SPRING DAY

What a special day—the first Saturday of the year with more neighborhood yard sales that I could get around to! Of course, in one of life’s little ironies, there didn’t seem to be much worth taking home (though I still managed to spend a few bucks). But the journey is more important than the destination, and what I did find was choice!

My friend Marcia was with me again this week, and we took turns exclaiming over the beauty of the day. Sunny and warm with a bit of a breeze, and everywhere lots of blooms on trees, shrubs and perennials. Roses everywhere…well, everywhere but my yard. I like roses, but I don’t do roses. So it's nice to get to admire them at other people’s houses. We were leaving one sale, making the curve around the end of the cul de sac, and we noticed the landscaping on the end house was just wonderful, with a curved path disappearing between beds of roses and other flowers. The lady who lived there was in her yard, so we called out how beautiful it was. She came over to the car and said she just couldn’t wait until her roses “really started blooming.” She said she comes out every day to see what’s happening in her flowers. Me too! Made me think about one of my favorite books, Return to Gone Away by Elizabeth Enright, where old Mrs. Minnehaha Cheever is talking about spring: “Think of how beautiful it will be…all the reeds of Gone Away tipping and swishing, and the redwings calling, and the bullfrogs grumping, and the roses just— Oh, I declare I can hardly wait for it myself! No matter how old a person gets, he’s never old in the spring!”

Met up with other Saturday morning regulars. There was Nancy, whom I wrote about last September, and Linda and Shelley (Linda and I play music together sometimes—but we met on a driveway!). Linda was jazzed because she had found the dining room table she’s been looking for, as well as two oak bookcases. And the guy even delivered the bookcases. Such a deal! There was even someone having a sale that I remember from last year. At least, I remembered her after I said hello and asked if she was having fun. Turns out she’s pretty deaf and I had to repeat myself much more loudly (“Are you having a fun morning?” loses a lot of its jauntiness when you have to up the volume), and when she baldly answered “No”—well, that’s when I remembered her!

I spent $9.25, and $5 of it went for one purchase. Can you believe the Queen of Fifty Cents has been doing these major splurges? Five dollars here, ten for a set of patio furniture a couple of weeks ago…don’t know what the world is coming to! But that fiver went for something useful—this brand new pair of shoes. I tried them on at the sale and they felt fine, and I put them on when I got home and have worn them now for several hours and they fit perfectly.

The next biggest category was door prizes. I found a large, soft stuffed dog who can help advertise the pet books, and will let kids read to him for hours, and a purple cow hand puppet.

And for our baseball summer reading program, I scored these trophies which will make fun decorations or even prizes. The teenage girl who had won them was decluttering her room, and she said she’d taken all the engravings off her trophies and is going to frame those bits together. So she’ll have a nice memento and we get the trophies and everybody wins.

This little midcentury Melmac sugar bowl is now the repository of the ibuprofen in my bathroom.
A small Christmas tree that will look lots better when I've cleaned off the old tinsel and coaxed it into a nicer shape.
I didn’t even notice the little ornaments when I picked it up (just the fifty cent price tag!) but some of them are fun.



I picked up some stuff to read (if you haven’t read Fannie Flagg’s books—do!).
And something I've always wanted to try—pie weights.
I've been making pies for at least 45 years, and I finally get to try out pie weights. I tell you, a little patience and fifty cents will get you just about anything your heart desires!