Digging for Treasure

In the spring in New England as the ground thaws and the ice melts magic happens. Myriad treasures start poking their way up out of the rich leaf and granite strewn earth.  I don't just mean the tender ferns or the bold daffodils. Vintage treasures appear.  It was not uncommon to walk between the green briers and over the stone wall in my backyard woods and find old rusty graniteware gleaming in the shaft of sunlight filtered down through the tall oaks and pines. 

Graniteware Blue and White Swirl available here

 My mother said these old metal dish pans, pitchers and buckets had been tossed out by her mother and other earlier woman who had lived in her childhood farmhouse. Bits and pieces of badly worn and often mended housewares that no longer had a useful purpose discarded to the old dump heaps in the woods and edges of fields now grown over. 

My Mother's Childhood Home Scituate, MA

Today I am lucky to still find treasures in the thrift shops, tag sales and estate sales that I haunt. How I would love to time travel back to those woods of my childhood and do some pickin there.

The Edge of The Woods
Scituate, MA

  I reach back in my memory to some of the places I loved to dig. Finding kitchen and farm tools, bits and pieces of broken bisque dolls, blue china dishes sometimes even coins. Lincoln pennies, Buffalo nickels, glass medicine bottles filled with dirt and twigs and moss grown thick around them.  My brothers found arrow heads. I always looked but never did find one of those. We played with these things.  Outfitting the tree houses and forts where our childhoods played themselves out. I guess I was born to dig for treasure.  I sure do love it.

I content myself with my memories and search on Etsy for treasures to share with you. Rusty dusty treasure found in the abandoned farms, corners of thrift shops, backs of yard sales...take a look.

Medicine Bottles from vickiesvintageporch on etsy here

Metal Flower Frogs from BlondiesVintage on Etsy here

Rusty Lantern from APapersPast on Etsy here

Galvanized Watering Can from UniqueChicAndRustics on Etsy Here

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Vintage Rusty Fry Pan from NanNasThings  on Etsy here

I'd have fun finding any of these and gladly grab them, stow them in the back of my car and scurry home with them.  When I get home with a car load of goodies like this they all go into a heap on the dining room table.  There I sort them out and stand back looking at them with pride.  I vow once a week to get the top of that old dining room table cleared off and polished.... just to fill it up again with the next weekends diggings of treasure.

Thanks to my friends on the Rust Dusty Treasury Team at Etsy for display of their pictures and promotion of their lovely shops.  

Anne/ WeeLambieVintage here

Memory

A moment in time. 
memory
love
a scent on a breeze
vapor...air

A photo is memory collected.
Revisiting a moment long gone like it is present again.
Here is my grandfather. Cap'n Colman.
That's Captain Irving Page Colman.  The shiny black hull to the right behind him is his boat. The Alice Elizabeth.  Grampa built her on his property in Scituate, Ma.  Here she is in the Scituate Boat Yard freshly painted and waiting for a spring launch.  He climbed up and down that ladder a million times and worked his arthritic knarly fingers in the cold March and April Massachusetts damp to get her ready. 
On this day he has company in his work.  I know because that is my brother Ross's  black TR3 behind him.  I am guessing this was taken the last early spring of my brother Ross's life in 1966.  He visited Grampa several times that spring, helped him get the boat ready and later sailed with Grampa in the waters off Scituate, MA. My last time spent with Ross was on this boat sailing with him and Grampa.
One picture and a thousand memories.  I can smell the salt air and feel the warmth of the wool pants and jacket Grampa is wearing.  He used to wrap me up in his wool p-coat when I'd get chilly onboard. 
One moment... a life... a shutter snap... a photo....

Anne