A funny thing I saw at the store (Trees)

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While waiting mindlessly at the check out line at the store, I spotted a magazine that looked interesting. It is named "Country Living Gardening"! I picked up the copy and looked at the front to see the contents. One of them was...get this...Ideal Curb Side Trees! Duh...if you live in the country there are NO curbs! Hubby ad I laughed all the way home!

-- Ardie from WI (ardie54965@hotmail.com), August 25, 2001

Answers

LOL, Ardie. That's as good as the Glad Trash bag ad in Organic Gardening, showing all this recyclable stuff in a plastic garbage bag. Wouldn't want to be the ad exec that let that one slip by.

-- Polly (tigger@moultrie.com), August 25, 2001.

You have to be in East Texas to love this, but our local Wallmart carries Youpon plants in the nursery section! Vicki

-- Vicki McGaugh TX (vickilonesomedoe@hotmail.com), August 25, 2001.

It seems the Country Living magazines cater to those who want the old- fashioned homestead LOOK without the old-fashioned homestead WORK and MESS (meaning, muddy chore boots at the back door and chicken poop in the yard). I am not knocking anybody who collects antiques, but if I had an old-fashioned jam cupboard, I'd want to paint it and store jam in it rather than leave it with the paint worn off and using it to display a collection of old toys, books, etc. I have my share of "pretties", but I am too practical to keep from using a perfectly good piece of furniture for every day purposes. The old timers in my family always painted something when it needed it. Nowadays people don't paint because they think it looks "old-fashioned" without it. And some of those magazines have instructions on how to paint and sand new furniture to make it look old! To each his own, I guess.

-- Cathy N. (keeper8@attcanada.ca), August 25, 2001.

Cathy, your unpainted furniture anecdote reminded me of my all time pet peeve...going into a furniture store, seeing a beautiful set of fine wood furniture, then looking close at the finish and seeing those artifical "distressing" marks. I asked about it and they actually *pay* people to beat up their furniture with ball peen hammers and whatnot before selling it!! Nearly criminal!

-- Susan (smtroxel@socket.net), August 25, 2001.

I don't get the "antique" mentality either. I like beauty and all that, don't get me wrong - but why in the world do people buy old glass electric fence insulators and stack them around the house as decorations? Somehow a thing is MORE beautiful to me if its being used for the purpose for which it was created, than if it is sitting around getting dusted once a week.

Imagine how those colored glass insulators must look to the tired farmer or rancher checking his fences, when the sun comes out and dances along the surface ...

-- Sojourner (notime4@summer.spam), August 26, 2001.



To each his own- I like the antiques because I LOVE history, the history of people that is. I like to examine objects and think about life and how that object fit into it. It helps me cope with things in my life-with modern,useful objects-when I think about how others coped with less before me. I think the idea of 'distress' marks came from the fact that as a piece of furniture gets used in a family it gets those marks. For some people this creates the feeling of history that a piece doesn't have. I have enough 'distress' marks without creating new ones, but I do understand the idea. As for using unpainted furniture to display objects-if that makes someone happy, who are you to judge. I have a wonderful (and too costly) piece of such furniture on my front porch for display of old garden stuff. I like it, it's not useful, but to me it is pretty in a rustic manner. (my son hates it-but he says if I like it it's okay by him). Glass fence insulators are not highly practical in the field anymore, cosly and easily broken causing injury to stock. How better to enjoy the light bouncing back on a sunny afternoon than through recyled tools? I have dirt, dust, dogs, chickens and real life to deal with-but I find a certain beauty in things that no longer have utility in their orginal form. Again, to each their own. p.s. my mother thinks I'm nuts to furnish my home and yard this way but I feel more at home here than anywhere else I've ever lived and in any other way I've ever lived. That's the key I think. Does YOUR home make you feel at home, rested, relaxed and comforted? Mine does for me. Again-to each their own. love you all in all your differences-it makes life interesting when I visit here. betty

-- betty modin (betty_m9@yahoo.com), August 26, 2001.

I agree with both sides! I love the look and feel of antiques, or near antiques, but really only appreciate them if they're being used. I love to buy old kitchen stuff (sifter, embroidered towels and cloths, etc) and then (SACRILIGE!) use them for their intended purpose. ;) I get a deep sense of history setting the table with an old tablecloth that some farmer's wife spent hours embroidering, or making bread in a bowl that has been used for the same thing for over 100 years.

-- Soni (thomkilroy@hotmail.com), August 26, 2001.

I don't have any particular problem with folks wanting a "country look" (whatever that is) to their suburban or urban homes, there's plenty who'd like to live in the country but feel constrained for one reason or another from doing so. Spent a number of years in that position myself before I was able to finally move past the sidewalk's end.

My problem is when folks take perfectly useful utensils and then ruin them! I've been wanting a round bottomed four gallon plus cast iron cauldron for years and I can't tell you how many I''ve come across that some yahoo drilled *holes* in the bottom to make it a planter! How many perfectly useful kerosene lanterns turned into electric lamps, horse drawn plows, well pumps, and so on, and so on, all ruined to turn them into country kitsch. If the item was worn past the point of usefulness I could understand but this stuff was all still serviceable. Aarrgghh.

={(Oak)-

-- Live Oak (oneliveoak@yahoo.com), August 26, 2001.


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