Guilty Pleasures Await

Warmer weather means gardens, birds, spring cleaning, walks, fishing and more. For many, scores of garage sale ads make up for a long winter without a reuse or recycle fix. There’s a whole group of folks whose guilty pleasure involves sorting through unwanted belongings, hoping to score treasure.

As a kid, I attended church rummage sales with mom or gramma. These involved tables full of well-worn clothing or outmoded hats. Unlike our daughters and grands, I didn’t anticipate weekly scavenger hunts where I might find already broken-in jeans, cowboy boots, denim jackets, camo, hunting and fishing supplies (including a Herter’s crow call), a favorite game piece, a specialized cooking utensil, or funky décor to sizzle up outfits and rooms.

While garage sales potentially interest anyone, they’re perfect for dressing children. Considering kids outgrow clothing before it wears out, these weekend sprees offer a budget Godsend. Expect to find quality jeans, tops, shoes, and coats for pennies on the dollar. Of course, you have to factor in added expense for toys your kids latch onto while you upgrade their wardrobe.

As a result of these trips, our girls had more playthings than they needed. Ditto for the grands. Their moms find clever sandboxes, motorized bikes and cars, doll houses, and more for prices that don’t break the bank. Oftentimes, these items are in excellent condition and can be resold when the sprouts outgrow them. It makes financial sense to practice a reduce, reuse, recycle policy.

That said, my favorite part of garage sale-ing is discovering treasures I didn’t know I needed. Some shoppers hit the streets each Friday and Saturday with a specific list. Others count on serendipity to bless their adventure. With our kids are grown, I’ve joined the second group, which adds a new level of anticipation to the experience.

I’ve picked up clam shells big enough to serve as bathroom sinks and a conch larger than a basketball. One now showcases rocks, the other necklaces. This decades’ long addiction helped me build an extensive shell collection. These finds pushed it over the top.

In addition, cool kitchen gadgets and cookware from American history wait to be reused. I didn’t even know about springform pans for making cheese cake til I found one at a garage sale. Now, it’s a kitchen essential. Recently, I picked up a never-used ceramic tart pan for a dollar.  While I use it only once or twice a year, it didn’t cost an arm and a leg so there’s no guilt.

This doesn’t cover vintage finds that include everything from Civil War letters to handcrafted lace doilies to WW II Ration books, stamps, and magazines. These discoveries make a history lover salivate. You never know when you’ll score the find that fills a hole in your collection. As a bonus, you often get the item’s background story.

 I hesitated to share my love for this guilty pleasure for fear it might increase competition. However, the growing numbers of advertisements lead me to believe good deals await anyone willing to hit the road to find them.

Art on the Move

Frequently, I see ornate box turtles crossing country roads or highways. Because I like this pack-its-own-home reptile, I dodge these speed bumps. While seeing them slowly lumber across the road triggers a smile, I hadn’t thought much about these Kansas state reptiles until recently.

This summer, I’ve been waking up early to enjoy the cool morning air as I water, weed, and pick veggies. A bonus of rising with the sun is meeting some of my yard neighbors that hide during the heat of the day.

One such friend is a good-sized box turtle that hangs out under my rose bushes in the mornings. I’ve seen it a couple of times, and today we met officially. This particular terrapene ornata, according to scientists, is at the larger end of expected sizes for its species.  I’d guess its shell is three to four inches across and five or six inches long. I didn’t have a measuring tape on hand at 6:30 a.m. for an official accounting, but she’s bigger than most turtles navigating Kansas roadways.

This particular reptile’s shell is dark with distinct yellow markings on the scutes or plates. Before she tucked her head inside her shell, I noted yellowish rather than reddish-orange eyes, which verifies she meets “she” criteria.

Like all box turtles, she has a hinged plastron that lets her tuck her head and limbs safely inside her shell. This ability frustrates hungry coyotes and other predators, but it won’t stop a vehicle cruising down the highway, one of this creature’s worst enemies. The minute she sensed me heading her way, she tucked everything tuckable until she resembled nothing more than a pet rock.

Ignoring her desperate, introvert-like attempt to achieve solitude, I placed my hands carefully along each lower side of her shell and examined her beauty close-up. Like any unhappy female, she promptly got even. Without sticking out head or legs, she peed, which made me jump backward to avoid a splattering.

 Once I finished my inspection of her masterpiece of black and yellow shell, I rewarded this pretty girl. I set a couple of pieces of melon in front of her so there would be a little something to make her day when she finally stuck her head out. Apparently, she can smell and likes cantaloupe because it was gone by the time I got upstairs to spy on her out the kitchen window.

After researching box turtle factoids, I see why she likes her flowerbed home. It’s damp, there are lots of sow bugs or roly-polies and other insects to meet her carnivorous dietary needs, and the temperature is more agreeable in that dark corner than most places in the yard. Containing the softest soil on the hilltop, it’s a great place to dig in for winter hibernation, which might explain my new friend’s greater than average size.

Now that we’ve met, she’s earned a daily serving of melon or fruit to enhance her diet. With room service like that, this lady should be glad to call this corner of Trego County home. I wonder how big my walking work of art will be next summer.

Seeing Possibilities in Junk

Spring cleaning involves scrubbing and sweeping away wintry stains, cobwebs, and dust. Outside the house it means raking wilted plantings and scouring patios and decks. Those now clean, fresh surfaces provide an artist’s canvas, inviting expression that can involve simply rearranging possessions or painting, constructing, and welding efforts.

Inside the house, this might involve moving furniture or adding bright pillows and throws. Outside, the possibilities are endless. One so inclined might use pallets to construct upright gardens that grow along a fence or garage wall or outdoor forts and furniture. Those who love funky yard art might head for the scrap heap to find broken down metal pieces that lend themselves to new lives as flywheel-bodied birds and insects with plier head ornaments, harrow tailed beasts, or disc and rebar mammals.

Waste not, want not is the mantra for folks who recognize a dolphin, stallion, or buffalo sculpture in a pile of rusty nuts, bolts, and gears. You can’t help but admire these creative spirits for both their vision and their skillset. Holy cow, they visualize a final product and then weld it out of what others tossed in the trash pile.

Think about possibilities waiting to be born from scrap heaps in garages, barns, and at the junk dealer’s. Old tractor seats wait to find a new life as a critter or a crazy looking picnic stool. Gazillions of metal knobs, faucets, and handles oxidize in isolation until inventive sorts spy them and reimagine them as garden fountains, coat racks, or google eyes on a dragon.

One young welder I know sees possibility in just about anything. He can take garage sale or auction- found plumbing pipes and turn them into high-end embellishments. I particularly like the innovative lamps he makes. If he gets tired of his day job, he could make a living selling his one of a kind furnishings and light fixtures.

In addition to scoping out creative neighbors, a stop at area flea markets or the Kansas Store on I-70 offers potential buyers and craftspeople a chance to see welded art creatures first hand. As a result of such adventures, my brother’s backyard now sports a tractor-seat-bodied and tailed strutting turkey. Who knows what discarded parts form its wattle. A welded grasshopper made of once useless implement parts guards mom’s roses. A heavy bodied woodpecker constructed from old plates, gears, and wheels climbs her trellis. A roadrunner made of soldered spikes oversees her dining room. My own collection includes a heavy-duty rooster, long-legged heron with leaf rake tail, and rusty armadillo formed from bits of rebar.

My husband recently bought a welder so once I find a source for metal, our menagerie will expand. Unlike living pets, these repurposed ones don’t require food or cleaning up poop. Besides, flying pigs and unicorn frogs exist in this world.

As you spring clean and find odd piles of metal or wood, consider the possibilities. How can you recycle junk into yard art that entertains you and visitors who happen to spot your creations? It’s not like we don’t have a model for grassroots art in nearby Lucas, Kansas.