This heat is terrible! My grass was getting tall because it has rained so much AND been so terribly hot. I managed to mow it last night because the temperature went from 91 degrees Fahrenheit to something at least a bit cooler, with a nice breeze. I still came in dripping, but at least I didn't have a heart attack.
On 'Fun Day' this week Ken and I went through a small town where we saw a farm stand selling corn and other veg. Ken is on a constant hunt for yellow corn, and he has had a really hard time finding it this year. (The past 10 years or so most farmers around here have grown nothing but white or bicolour corn. Now, when I was a kid I hated white corn, and I still do. I don't care what the sellers try to tell us, there's just not as much flavour in white corn. It's not as nutritional either. I see why they want to sell the white and bicolour instead of the yellow. It ripens earlier, and in some cases they can get two crops of white to one of yellow, which takes a whole season to ripen. We have stopped at most farm stands we passed and Ken was starting to sound like Eeyore: "Don't bother to stop. They won't have yellow corn anyway." Well I stopped at this one anyway, and he was told that their corn was bicolour. He was ready to droop away to the sad Charlie Brown music.
But then the lady said that the farmer had another field, of yellow corn, and that it was ready to be picked. The farmer talked to Ken and said he could have the yellow corn for him the next day. Luckily the small town was only about a half hour from home, so we said we'd come back and get a couple of dozen ears the next morning. So Ken was afraid it would be gone when we got there, but thrilled when it was still waiting for him.
The other thing we saw on the way to Fun Day was in our own town. There was a porch sale going on at the local flower and gift shop, but it wasn't flower shop stuff. It was a Wednesday sale too, so how many people had shopped it? I would have stopped on Fun Day itself, but we got a late start and Ken wanted to get to a bin store before it closed. (He's still obsessed.) So when we got back from the corn pickup, and I had dropped Ken at home so he could get lunch before going to work, I ran over to the ongoing porch sale.
Apparently the guy who now owns the flowers and gift shop also lives there. It's a beautiful old house and he lives upstairs. So the porch sale was on the porch and inside the downstairs. The stuff that was being sold was from the estate of an elderly person who had passed away. The flower shop people were just clearing the house out. There were all sorts of old things, from a lot of different eras. I was told that the person who had died was from a large family, of which only one had had children. As each successive sibling passed away, all their belongings were passed on to this one. When the last one passed away everything went to the last living relative, an older man in New York, who didn't want anything. In fact, he didn't even want to come look at what was in the house! So the shop owners were clearing it out and selling the contents. (I don't know what arrangement they had made: buying the contents, or clearing the house and splitting the profits.) Anyway, I digress. There were loads of old things, and you know I love old things. One of the things I got was this cute little girl.
Isn't she so cute? She is marked 'Perfect'.
She's composition and about 14 inches tall.
She has quite a few cracks in her face, but I suspect she's from the 1930's. You'd have 'wrinkles' too if you were about 90 years old.
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As you can see, she has tin sleep eyes and painted teeth.
She has a stuffed cloth body, with a crier. Unfortunately, the crier doesn't work. But we want her to be happy anyway. Right? Her arms are attached with a pin that goes through one arm, into the other.
Her little knees are blushed.
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| She does have a little shoe problem. |
Her hair is really delicate. It disintegrates when touched. Guess she's leaving her bonnet on! I would assume the bonnet and undies are original to her.
The young man who owns the shop was super nice and friendly. We ended up talking a long time, about old houses, and woodwork, and cats. He said that with all the stuff they had in the sale, so far they have only emptied out the kitchen and two garages! They haven't even started on the main part of the house. I gave him my phone number so he could call me if they came across any more dolls or toys, or a few other things that Ivy and I might want. Let's hope there's more cool stuff to come!
