Aardvark Art Glass

 I needed something to transport my display stuff to Bead and Button so I bought a rockstar piece of luggage from the thrift store the other day. It’s an American Tourister that was designed for transporting suits or something–many are it’s pockets and compartments. Like almost everything in the world these days, it has wheels and a handle so you can drag it along behind you. Probably not the greatest shape for my needs but it’s big and hardly used and it was only ten dollars.

So last night when I was gutting it to make room for my junk I found a hard object wrapped up in tissue paper jammed into one of the compartments. Of course a brief thrill ensued as I wondered if maybe the object would turn out to be a diamond or gold or something. Though not of intrinsic value, I feel lucky to have found this in my suitcase. I’m going to carry it with me for a few days to see if it is indeed a lucky object.

Someone purchased this little resin apple ornament  at City Merchandise in New Yawk City. It cost $4.99. Half the price of my suitcase. What I find most intriguing about the find is that, if the price tag is correct, this apple was purchased and placed in the suitcase in 1990. That information brings me one step closer to ascertaining something that I’ve been wondering about for quite a while which is: What is the exact year in which people started putting wheels and handles on every damn thing?

Growing up I always borrowed my parent’s ancient Samsonite luggage which was  known for it’s durability rather than it’s beauty or portability. Samsonite commercials featured a real gorilla flinging the bags around a steel barred cage, not unlike a modern baggage handler. That was some tough, heavy luggage. Our luggage. Luggage we planned to carry proudly, strongly, with our muscular arms, in the event that we would ever go somewhere, which we never did. 

So, back to the wheels on luggage…I travel some now but I still feel like I missed something between the gorilla commercials and the backpack with a handle and wheels that was at the thrift store. Now I know, whatever it was it occurred pre-1990. The thrift store suitcase held all the answers.

Well, got rid of that. What a colossal waste of time being sick is. I had some world-class crabbiness going on, too. Don’t know if the sickness was aggravating me or what but that was a f’ing drag of a week.

Anyhoo…back up and working on B&B inventory. Not much to say today, just thought I’d check in. More later.

I caught that upper-respiratory thing that’s going around. Don has had it for eons. I just picked it up on Saturday. It makes me kind of tired and pissy and I’m coughing up some pretty nightmarish material. The sickness isn’t so bad that it keeps you from walking around outside potentially spreading it to other people. It’s a smart bug. I’m going to try and defy it by sitting around inside and not coughing.

Bla. Well, anyway, on Sunday me and Don went to our pal Miriam’s house and picked up a truckload of  hastas and ferns for the front yard. Ever since we bought the house, the top two pieces of unsolicited advice that strangers and loved ones alike have to offer us are 1) “You should sand and finish your wood floors” and 2) “You should plant hastas and ferns in your front yard.” Most people who have been here realize that nicing up the interior of the house would only cause inconvenience to and possibly guilt on our guests when, inevitably,  something nice got messed up. So we don’t do that. As far as the front yard goes, it is completely within our power to change it’s appearance. It does look a lot better than it did when we first moved in, but, since we don’t have any of the same neighbors that we did three years ago, no one really remembers that. They just know the yard is really barren and ugly now…and that we should plant hastas and ferns there.

So, long story short, our front yard is now full of little green plants that allegedly flourish in the shade and I am filled with an sense of accomplishment afforded to people who plant things and thus make their surroundings  prettier. Unfamiliar feeling! Nice one, though.

Well, that wasn’t a bad blog. But the yard was not my intended blog topic this day. The tidbit I really wanted to mention is dear to my heart because it involves the twin pleasures of talking about how the more carefully you plan something the less likely it is to stick and also how everything in the world is funner and more dangerous when it can be explained in the terms of a Deadliest Warrior episode. Ready? So, in addition to our shady plant assortment, our pal Miriam also provided me with some strawberry plants that were growing in her backyard. I can believe in and love plants that make strawberries. And Miriam’s plants have flowers on them which means they are going to make real strawberries in the very near future. Miriam is nice. So we have these valuable little plants but no tractor tire to plant them in because all of our tires are full of carefully thought out nightshades, legumes and roots, all of which I like decidedly less than strawberries. Rather than dig anything up, me and Don decided to just stick the strawberries in on top of  the radishes (which I only bought because the seed store was out of carrots and I needed a second root) and have a horticultural cage match inside the tractor tire. And so, the four crop rotation plan lasted…2 weeks, maybe, from conception to end? It is still a good plan, but I like horticultural cage match better. What’s funny is the radishes are coming up like crazy, like they noticed the strawberry and they want to mix it up. No sign of the beets, peas or beans. I should go get some squash seeds and stick them in the other tire just to see what happens. This is very fun for me. And I like squash better than beans.

Decisions have been made about garden configurations. Tractor tires! Of course! Upsides-tractor tire, no bed building required, they’re green and, also,  how happy must we have made the person who donated these to us by taking them off his hands. Downsides-round beds are not real conducive to plants that are supposed to grow in rows and, well, they’re really big and tirey-looking. But there they are and now there’s seeds in ’em so there’s no turning back. The fourth bed, which is last year’s tomato bed, is an actual flat space that’s not in the picture. I’m planting lettuce and spinach there for me lizard. Lizards eat dandelions as well but we don’t have any of those…or grass. Maybe you should just ignore the picture.

We decided to go with the four bed rotating thing-one for the nightshades, one for roots, one for legumes and one for greens. I don’t know why I’m explaining to you what you must already know. Clearly I’m the last one to learn about this gardening method. I have wondered why raised bed gardens ALWAYS came in fours and now I know. That’s the best way to do it. Never mind that I’m not so enthusiastic about roots…or beans really…and, you  know, there’s so damn many bunnies around the greens don’t really stand a chance. In fact, barring some freak expansion of my capicity to love, I can’t really see myself bonding with anything other than the tomatoes. Maybe I’ll get attached to the other plants once they sprout. I’ve never had a multi-species garden before. It’s kind of exciting.

Oh, hey! This is funny. At least I think it’s funny. I was researching plant planting on the web and I came across some tomato instructions on a Martha Stewart-ish looking site. The instructions say that, before planting the tomato plant, you’re supposed to dig down a foot and bury an eggshell, two aspirin and a fish head. That’s supposed to enrich the soil and prevent black end rot but to me it also sounds like a spell that might make that elusive man or woman fall in love with you. I think if you add a few drops of blood or a lock of hair you could use it to smite an enemy or raise the dead. I don’t know…that was all a little TMT (Too Much Trouble) or TMPC (Too Much Plant Coddling) for me. I know that I selected the smartest, strongest and best looking tomato plants the hardware store had to offer and that they will thrive  inside their recycled tractor tire home. I can tell they’re happy to be there already. Because I’m in touch with the tomatoes. The roots and the legumes, not so much.

I been quiet lately. Mostly I’ve been busy cranking out little bead sets. It’s not as horrible as I thought it would be, the set making, but it’s kind of slow going. Beads keep bouncing away when I clean them and my bead reamer is bald. But enough about my problems.

Hey-here’s big news for me: In June I’ve got two metal smiths, Missy and Sarah, moving their benches into my shop. Equipment! And company! And one of them is a bartender! And the other one likes reptiles! What’s uncommonly wack-a-doo about the whole thing is that, with three people here, we could actually open the store seasonally and get back on the gallery walk. The memory of participating in that is far enough in the past that it actually seems like a good idea again. Who. Would. Have. Thought. The space is going to be about 75% studio but there’s room for people to walk around and I’ve got cases and whatever for our junk that’s for sale. So that might work. We will know soon…