You can only just begin to imagine my excitement at finding THIS at an estate sale.... in the garage. There were several sad looking tools leaning up against the wall of the garage. I saw this funky looking rake and  said to the guy in charge, “What’s this?”. He said, “It’s a clam rake, for clamming at the beach.” I was in love.



I knew right then what I was going to do with it also. THIS:



I put some of the coco planting stuff in the rake first and then plopped in a whole, small hanging basket of Million Bells Petunias. Done. No cleaning of the rake. No polishing. No nothing.
Just do it. Love it.



I do have a picture of the clam rake standing up in the front of my house leaning on one of the window boxes, but I can’t find the picture. Dang. I hate that.

Onward. My sister has a wonderful old wash tub that we bought at the Amish Country (she lives only an hour away from there). Actually, I’m here now. We are thinking of lots of summer things to blog about and we are going to the Amish Country tomorrow, too.  I love summer.



Is this too wonderful or what?



I bought this old colander at a tag sale. I remember my mother having one of these when I was a kid. I decided I could use it for a planter...









It found a nice place in the garden, didn’t it?



As I was cruising around the tag sales I came across a really cute house in a neighboring town – they had really interesting stuff.  Here is an old coal scuttle with pretty, pink geraniums.



Here’s a cute porcelain pot with delicate lobelia flowers in it.



Just look at these wonderful old posts and staircase spindles. WOW. I was lucky to get these, don’t you think? I got the whole batch of these for $4. at a tag sale. Oh, and that’s Bunny, our rescue dog from Texas.



Just see what I did with the old spindles:

Believe it or not, a nail holds the darling hammered aluminum bowl onto the old staircase spindle. Hubs said, “Don’t you want to scrape off the brown paint and repaint it?” NOPE! Love it like it has some wear to it. It has character.



This is the beautiful bottom of the hammered aluminum bowl.



Little fluted baking pan on top of the spindles.


.
I just like the way it looks with nothing in it. It’s like sculpture. :)



Coffee anyone?



a bit more rustic..



This isn’t an unusual pot but the Johnny jump-ups are so cute, they almost look fake. (My sister just informed me they’re dead. We’ve had so much rain our flowers are looking bedraggled.) Maybe it’ll come back... (she just said it won’t come back. It’s gone).








Have a great Wednesday, everybody!!