Buttons

I needed one button; a simple white 1/2" shirt button with 4 holes.

Friday afternoon seemed the ideal time to catch up with a small stack of ironing and a few garments which needed the hems taken up--items which had accumulated while so many hours have been spent in the garden or putting up produce.

My sewing machine and fabrics are in the large cool family room in the basement--at least 10 degrees cooler than the main level of the house on these sweltering July days.

The vintage-style blouse, one which I  snatched from the rack at Goodwill, had sleeves which flowed past my fingertips. meant to be  gathered--one supposes at the wrist---with a fine fabric tie.

Gina, the fashion expert, agreed that I could shorten the sleeves to my favorite elbow length.

It was only when I spread the shirtwaist on the ironing board that I noticed a button missing.

Several decades ago I made many similar "blouses"--for myself, for G. and for her cousins.

[It was the era of Jessica McClintock's "Gunne Sax" vintage style frocks and blouses--rather pricey off the rack, but something of a pleasure for a skilled seamstress to produce.]

I have buttons from that time still on their tidy cards, but a rummage through two of my button boxes didn't turn up an exact match.

I stitched on a similar button so that I could wear the shirt this weekend--

but the slight mis-match troubles me.

Today I pulled out several button boxes--taking inventory of my stash.

I have many novelty buttons; some beautiful metal buttons were given to me by a friend who worked for many years at the Geiger of Austria plant in Middlebury, Vermont.

At the end of each fashion season cones of thread matched to the woolens, linens and silks of a particular "line"  were discarded, as well as the distinctive buttons.

Knowing that I was doing some tailoring at the time, C. asked if I could use buttons.

To my astonishment she appeared the next day with two zip lock bags bulging with buttons.

My grand daughter--4 or 5 years old at the time--loved to separate the buttons into matching piles.

Eventually we strung them like beads on red string to keep them sorted.

I bought the cat buttons--just because they are catty.

The impractical but intriguing owl buttons were removed from a pricey sweater that came my way.

I have buttons in baskets, buttons in tins.

I brought this tin of old buttons from my parents house after their deaths.

My mother, like all frugal homemakers, clipped and saved the buttons from clothing that was too worn to be refurbished.

J.'s mother also had a box of saved buttons and I have carried on this time-honored thrifty practice.

[I suspect my generation is the last to patch, mend or replace bottons!]

These are some of the more startling examples from my mother's box

Those three domed buttons in the center are actually clear and almost cone-shaped.

The green marbled one is huge. My Mom was quite conservative in her clothing choices--hard to imagine that she flaunted something like that green one--or even the red disks with the lop-sided white centers.

Buttons with Beatrix Potter images--I must have used some of these for a dress for one of the grand daughters.

Middlebury, Vermont [30 minutes from my home for many years]

had many lovely shops--catering to the well-to-do people associated with prestigious Middlebury College.

Danforth Pewter made all sorts of serving pieces, elaborate candlesticks, vases, pitchers.

They also produced specialty buttons, charms for bracelets, hair clasps, key chains.

The buttons were displayed in cunning wooden bins.

I was making vests [waistcoats] at the time--pieced of beautiful woolens, velveteens and such.

If the vest was a gift I sometimes bought buttons which I knew the recipient would enjoy.

I believe I meant these pansy buttons for a vest to keep--I may yet create it!

Cowboy boots and hat--buttons which I used to decorate the collar of a denim jacket which J. wore for years.

A favorite vest which I still wear---can you see the cat face buttons?

Teasel took an interest in my button rummage.

Even one button dropped on the floor would be a choice tidbit for a bored cat to roll about.

Cats and buttons on the loose aren't a good combination: rather like handing over the button box to amuse a child who would put them in mouth, nose or ears!

I did finish the alterations and ironing, in spite of the elusive button.

I seem to be acquiring a collection of simply elegant white shirts.

If you recall Meryl Streep's wardrobe for the role of Karen Blixen in Out of Africa

you'll have an idea of the "shirtwaists" accumulating in my closet.

I Refused to Garden Today!

Weather in Kentucky has been a case of extremes this spring/summer.

An early spell of warm jump-started gardens, then May regressed into a sulk of chilly rain.

Early June brought temps in the 90's [F] humidity and a scarcity of moisture.

Flowers in the borders grew tall and lank--grass and weeds came up around them and I could only watch--first as the ground was too soggy to work, then became too dry. During such windows of opportunity as occurred, I put the needs of the vegetable garden first.

It rained for perhaps an hour on Sunday morning; enough rain to create mud in the edges of garden rows.

Yesterday [Monday] was a perfect day to weed. Grass and such pulled easily from moist ground and an overcast sky meant that I could work outside for hours without danger of keeling over from heat and sun.

I picked two collanders of green beans and weeded the bean rows as I picked.

I then turned my attentions to the strawberry patch. Runners set new plants very heavily early in the spring making the foliage very dense in some places.  I was able to clean out an area where the new runners are smaller, did some hand grubbing in the heavier planting.  I need to get back in there with my 3-pronged tool to pull out a sort of creeping clover that has invaded.

Siberian catmint has grown to towering heights--this clump was sheared last week.

I came inside long enough to cook some of the green beans to serve with left-over potato salad, sliced cucumbers in vinegar and sliced tomatoes.

I spent the next 3 or 4 hours in the two perennial strips, working until nearly full dark.

Weeding is easier this year.  Last season we contended with newly turned ground and decaying sod.

There are still clumps of an invasive heavily rooted grass finding their way in.  Most of the grass underneath the roses and larger perennials is a soft, shallow rooted stuff.

As you see above, the lovely poppies are about past their short blooming season.  The lower leaves have turned crisp and brown.  I'm so hoping that the seeds mature and dry in the pods without a wet spell to cause mildew. I have two plants of lupine rooted in--spoils from Gina's splurge at the Amish auction.

I planted lupines--from seed and from well-rooted plants--in my Vermont garden--it never flourished.

I scattered zinnia seed saved from last years garden in several bare spots. I think it will make a fine showing within a few weeks, filling in gaps.

Today's pink peony poppy.

There will be a day or two more to enjoy the shaggy dark red poppies.

Note how the stems have twisted as they endured wind and rain.

A bumble bee enjoys the monarda lambada--this was started from seed last year.

There are two colors. mauve and a pink.

It likes to invade.

A small single petaled poppy.

The rugosa rose behind the poppy is Blanc Double de Coubert--one of my favorites.  I'm concerned by the yellowed leaves on this and on another rugosa.  I'm hoping that with the space around them opened up they will become greener.  I think some TLC is in order.

Willis the helpful cat sniffs at a leaning poppy stalk.

The look of innocence.

Willis is the stringiest, shabbiest looking cat imaginable.

He is de-wormed regularly.

He is served good quality food.

He is just scruffy!

When my day of weeding ended in last night's twilight I was incredibly grubby: I wore my favorite gardening jeans--a pair with blown-out ragged knees.  Thus my knees were muddy.

I had worn sandals and my feet were a disgrace. My hands are stiff today and I've been trying to restore my nails to some kind of decency.

My aging bones ache!

I announced to J. that I wasn't gardening; I declared that I didn't intend to clean house---or do laundry---or bake.  He had recruited Devin to help with a project and suggested I go to town and do the banking.

I collected Gina and we had a lovely girl's day out.

We hit Goodwill--where G. found several sets of lace curtains which will be fine in her house, until I am sufficiently energized to deal with curtain making.

She found picture frames [which she will spray paint for a cottage-y look] for some of her presently unframed bits of artwork.

I found a pair of denim knee-length pants and another pair in brown linen, as well as a denim jacket.

[I love these finds--high-end brand names, $3.00 the pair and if I get paint or mud on them no big deal!]

We drove to the town square to do the banking--and feeling wildly adventurous, I led G. into a shop crammed with an assortment of vintage wares, primitive reproductions, textiles, china, etc.

I began to think that I would have to drag her ou!

Hunger prevailed: "Aren't we near the cafe that makes those wonderful sandwiches?"

"Right next door," I replied, "And I'm headed there!"

We had a fine lunch [G. treated], picked up a few neccesities at Wal Mart [Dreadful Place!] then stopped at our friend Marla's Casey House Antiques on our way home.

The above photo is of just one display there.

Marla's collectibles deserve a whole post of their own.

So---home, to find that J. had managed to make himself a sandwich, to find that the kitchen was untidy and needed attention. 

I dealt with that, then out to wander around the flower garden assessing the results of yesterday's labors--seeing work work still to be done--but not today!

[I did buy a treasure at the shop in town--but I'm not ready to show it off yet!]

Oddments

On the left, a glass prism, its angled spire roughly chipped. In the center, a battered doorstop. On the right is a fragile celluloide swan, remnant of my babyhood.

The heavy doorstop, an elephant, was made in two identical halves.  When he was newly formed tusks and a tail were tucked somehow between and held together.  When I was a child, when we still lived in my grandfather's house, the elephant braced open the parlour door. Even then he was bandaged, a strip of now grubby, faintly flowered muslin stitched around his middle over a binding of twine--likely some of the "saved string" that my grandfather thriftily unraveled from the tops of feed sacks, wound around the paper tags and stuffed into a large Prince Albert tobacco can--all handy when a bit of mending was needed.

The scrap of red cloth, now so rotted and frayed, was wound under the elephant's chin and over his back, secured with more stitching.  In his days of shabby glory I recall the fabric as still a sturdy red swath which neatly hid the earlier mendings.

The parlour sat at the south west end of the farmhouse. My uncle believed it had been one of first two rooms of the house to be built and surely the wide painted floorboards attested to an earlier incarnation. Part of the floor was covered with an ingrain carpet, patterned in flowery swirls of dark gold, blue and green against a dull red background. My grandmother's upright piano had pride of place, flanked by a plaid-cushioned loveseat and matching chairs. A very formidable and stiff black rocker defied anyone to sit in it comfortably. One door, the door the elephant guarded, led into the living room, the other into the narrow center hallway where the staircase with its worn treads rose to the five bedrooms.

When my next younger sister moved to the farmhouse with her family to help care for our grandfather and later our uncle, the dignified square parlour was divided to create a bathroom and a rather dreary little bedroom.  The elephant, by then mysteriously minus his tusks and tail, his wrappings decidedly faded and tattered, now served as a deterent to anyone inclined to burst through the bathroom door without knocking.

Our grandfather died in 1978 and our uncle followed a few years later, leaving the old house crammed full of the belongings of three generations.  My sisters and I, with our mother, sorted for days, unearthing a few long-hidden family keepsakes and treasures as well as an ever growing heap of items which, as my grandfather might have declared had "out-lived their usefulness."

Some of the finer things, to my regret, my mother decreed must be sold. Many items found their way to the trash bin. 

There remained the bits and pieces of no great worth, the oddments to be carried away simply because we couldn't bare yet to  part with these things which had been taken for granted, a part of the familiar trappings of an old home for so many years.

I took the derelict elephant home with me and set him near my bedroom door, where I sometimes stubbed  my toe on his cold heavy form.

I brought him west with me nearly a dozen years ago--along with the cracked celluloid swan and the chipped glass prism. 

I have started packing---stowing newspaper-wrapped dishes in cartons, removing things from cupboards, wandering through the house with a speculative and appraising eye.  My friends at work have donated boxes, our daughter lugged copy paper boxes [with lids!] home from school.

The process of dismantling and packing my household goods is dauntingly familiar. Somehow it will get done and in the coming few weeks the house will become unsettled, less welcoming, as pictures are removed from the walls, dresser tops cleared, books bundled into the stacks of boxes which will soon rim the edges of each room.

I wonder if a few decades hence, someone will wonder at finding among the hoarded oddments of my lifetime a broken doorstop in the form of an elephant. Who will remember the part of his story that I know?

Perhaps I should make him a new red bandage.