Occasional Threads – Ellen Guerrant

The late afternoon light cast interesting shadows on these ghost pumpkins.

We are so fortunate to have a farmer’s market at the bottom of our street – just seven houses away.  Open Tuesday, Friday and Saturday (daily in October), the market gives us easy access to fresh fruits and vegetables, glorious bouquets, plants, baked goods and even fresh shrimp and grass-fed beef.  Fall is one of my favorite times there, as that’s when the pumpkins arrive!

We and the kids walked down Tuesday with their sweet baby Leven for her first visit to a pumpkin patch.  It was fun to watch her propped up for a photo shoot.

Diapers dry in the ocean breeze

Are clotheslines making a comeback?  I wish.   I love the sight of clothes and linens billowing in the air.  The kids rigged a make-shift version when we vacationed at the beach recently.  Grandbaby Leven’s didies were a great image on our front deck.

Four Sisters Farm, Sycamore IL – the place where I grew up.

Note the clotheslines in the front yard, lower left.

Photo circa 1955(?) by Air Views

Clotheslines were a part of my childhood.  Thinking about them brings back memories of conversations and laundry lessons with my late Mother as we hung fresh laundry on the line.  Considered by many to be a laborious chore, doing laundry has always been fun to me.  Maybe I need to get out more!

Did you have clotheslines at your house?

Eighth Grade Girl Scouts from Our Lady of Grace Catholic Church, Greensboro, cheerfully volunteered their time to the Sweet Cheeks Diaper Derby last week.

Photo credit:  Suzie Guerrant  http://mattandsuzie.com/

My DIL and I spent a couple of hours last week at a Diaper Derby workshop, helping Sweet Cheeks Diapers make kits to be distributed to WIC  (low income Women, Infants and Children) families. There were about 15 volunteers there, and the time flew by.  Melissa Tankersley (mother of founder Shane Morris) ran things efficiently, setting up several work stations for cutting, assembling and adding snaps.  Recycled tee-shirts, laundered and sanitized courtesy of A Cleaner World, are the foundation of the diapers.  Plastic snaps donated by Kamsnaps  kamsnaps.com are used as closures.

Join a Diaper Derby to benefit WIC families.  They’re held the first Tuesday night of every month, from 6-8 pm at Brady Services (1915 N. Church St, Greensboro, NC).  It’s a great cause.  Fifty diapers were made at last week’s derby.

Contoured diaper shapes are cut from recycled tee-shirts.  Some images may be censored………………….or not – like the one below which I personally thought was great fun.

Five cut tee-shirts are layered for each diaper.

Sweet Cheeks Diapers Kits was founded by Shane Morris, a mother of two, upon learning there is no federal  assistance  for diapers available to low-income families.  Read her words below and click on the link for more information about this great nonprofit.  sweetcheeksdiaperkits.org

Created by my Mother when she was in the eighth grade, this clothes pin apron was a gift from her one Christmas long ago.  Made with a button closure, the waistline measures just 23″.

The words “Clothes Pins” were embroidered on the hand-sewn apron along with leaves and flowers.

I was surprised when several people responded to my recent Facebook post about making a clothes pin apron. “What is that?” they asked.  Let me enlighten the curious about this old fashioned item nearly every woman owned.

Clothes pin aprons like this were worn back in the day when laundry was usually hung outside.  When I was growing up, clotheslines were everywhere!  Our family of six generated lots of clothes and household linens each week which required bunches of clothespins.   For convenience and efficiency, this type of apron was devised by a clever someone.   The large pocket  held a lot of clothespins, eliminating steps back and forth to replenish the supply.   Bags made with a wire frame that hooked over the line were also once available.   I have an ancient one I use on our basement line near the washing machine.

Any time-saving shortcut was welcomed at our house, a busy place indeed.  I grew up in the country, on 200-acres called  ”Four Sisters Farm”  My father raised Shetland ponies and horses and farmed, raising sweet corn, soybeans, oats and alfalfa.  There was an orchard with apple trees, a hen house, chickens, guinea hens, ducks, geese, pigs and sheep raised for their wool. We also had a huge garden from which we canned or froze enough food to feed a family of six all winter long.  When my sisters and I complained about having to spend an entire day freezing strawberries or corn, my father would say, “They’ll taste good when the snow flies.”

Although the farm was an idyllic setting for kids, keeping up with the work was never ending.  My three sisters and I had daily chores which had to be completed before dinner.  We had a large slate blackboard (chalkboard) on which Mother would list, in a neat column, what needed to be done that day.  Across the top were the names of my three sisters and me.  Each of us was responsible for the same number of jobs, usually three or four.  Mother did not assign them, but let us choose what we wanted to do.  The first ones up in the morning of course had first “dibs.”  Being a true night owl, that was never me!  So instead of “dusting” I usually ended up with far more laborious tasks such as picking long rows of green beans, bending over in the hot sun for far longer than I would have liked.

I’ve always felt so lucky to have grown up on a farm and to have had parents who were skilled at teaching self-sufficiency.  Yes, I was taught to have a good work ethic, but the lessons of the blackboard flew right by.  I’m still an incurable  night owl and getting worse with age.

I helped my DIL hang a couple of loads of laundry recently.  That afternoon brought back memories of helping Mother when I was a kid.  Mother loved doing laundry and  was extremely fussy about it too, insisting that it be hung neatly on the line.  First  were the bed linens, then jeans, tee-shirts, blouses and skirts, and finally boxers and socks.   No mish-mash for the neighbors to see, no ma’am.

My long-time readers know I’ve always felt I was born at the wrong time.  I loved everything about the  days of my youth in the 1950′s.  I’m crazy for movies from the ’40′s – the sets, the furniture, the cars, the gowns.  I have almost nothing new in our house, preferring instead vintage and family things.   I long for the days long ago, as they were so dear to my heart.  When I hang laundry on a line using a clothes pin apron, I can almost reach back and touch them again

My Original Photo

PhotoShopped by Bill Guerrant, my DH

We have morning glories growing all along the fence next to our garden, purposefully planted to act as a “screen.”  They are in lovely shades of blues, pinks and violets.   I shot several one recent morning, but was then disappointed at what I saw on the computer monitor.  No longer was the blue the vibrant color I’d seen just moments before.  My efforts at PhotoShop did not suit me.  The colors were still washed out.  Whine!

DH, who has been a very good, award-winning  photographer most of his life, learned  tricks in the darkroom he applies to Photoshop.  Things such as “adjusting” and “burning.”  I know how to adjust the brightness, etc., but nothing as sophisticated as DH can do.

The photos above illustrate what a little (or a lot) of skill can accomplish.  I think the difference is outstanding.

I’m a photographer wanna be – living with a guy with a lifetime of experience but not enough patience to teach a novice.  Our son and daughter-in-law have degrees in photography so I learn a lot by following them around and really looking at their shots. Check their site here: http://mattandsuzie.com/

Additionally, our DIL is a PhotoShop Guru, having won the national award a few years ago.  Want that staircase removed from your photo?  She can do that for ya.

If you’re into trains, check my son’s site:  http://www.railpictures.net/showphotos.php?userid=28734 I think he has some awesome shots.