Page has been updated with some new projects for the week. I will be updating every thursday. Here is a link that might be useful: My online Journal

Mia, The one in the first two photos with the little yellow bell-shaped flowers looks so familiar, but I cannot figure out why. I bet it will come to me today while I am out working in the garden, and then I'll come back inside and tell you what I think it is. Ditto for the ferny thing with yellow flowers. It doesn't grow here at our house, but something about it seems familiar and I am pretty sure it is a weed. (Don't pull it out yet, though, because someone might know what it is and it could be a desirable weed.) The one that's growing in the pea gravel near the greenhouse is a weed. I don't know the name of it, but it is very prolific. After we rototilled our big garden the first year, that stuff came up like mad for months (no, make that years). I had to pull them out for ages and ages. It probably was 10 years before I felt like they were "gone". Now, every year maybe 2 or 4 or 6 sprout and I promptly yank them. My best guess on the little heart-shaped leaves is that they are some form of wild morning glory. I have several different kinds here, including bindweed, and I yank out every one of them that I see. Some have leaves like the ones in your photo, others have leaves in a different shape, but none of them is allowed in or near my garden. They make a billion seeds each and if you let one grow and go to seed, you'll have a billion new ones next year. The first year I had a wild morning glory sprout in my garden that did not resemble bindweed, I thought "Oh, how pretty" and let it grow, flower (the flowers were a lot smaller than normal morning glories but much smaller). That was a mistake. It had to have been 5 or 6 years ago, and I still yank out its seedlings in the garden. In fact, I was pulling some of them yesterday after I found them sprouting and growing under taller desirable plants. The heart-shaped leaf looks familiar. I think it might be velvetleaf or one of its family members. At first I thought it was velvetleaf, but the more I looked at the leaf shape, the more I talked myself out of thinking that. The leaves don't look quite right for the velvetleaf weeds I find here, but it also is possible there are other velvetleaf plants with foliage more like that in your photo. With the hackberries, those little things on the foliage are galls. There are different galls that are found on hackberries, but to me they all look pretty similar. We had a hackberry-infested chainlink fence line in Fort Worth and it was a mess to "fix" because the previous oweners and the adjacent neighbors had let the trees grow in the fence to the point that parts of the fence were enclosed within tree trunks---the trunks had grown right over/around the hackberries. Every one of those trees had galls. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Hackberry Gall info

There are only two of this style on eBay right now. The others on the oldtymecollectables site include postage. Someone slap me!! I DON'T need this! I don't need to spend money on something I don't need! Grocery prices and gas prices are going up and up. My wages stay the same. "The economy......." Yeah, right. How many people off the street can do my job? Here is a link that might be useful: Humpty items here

The Perkiomenville Auction is still going -- every Monday year round. There are still dealers and the auction part. There are far fewer dealers than there used to be -- I would recommend if you are going to have a far drive to go on a holiday weekend like memorial day or labor day as that is the only time the auction is really hopping anymore. (Though the first few nice Mondays of spring are also bound to be crowded.) The deaers also don't seem to start as early as they used to -- used to be most dealers were there and set up by dawn. Now if I get there at 7 or 8 it is still empty -- people are rolling in to set up when I am leaving at 9. Again, though, the holiday weekends are an exception -- best to be early those days. I did figure out the auction tables thing - yes, you can pick through things left behind. Technically, though, I think you are supposed to offer money to the woman collecting money for the auctioneer for what you take -- I have seen her yell at people. But there are always a ton of people taking stuff and not being very subtle about it (they bring boxes and tote bags and load up) and no one seems to pay. I'm pretty sure that what gets left behind gets tossed unless the consignor comes back to get it (and most of it is like mildewy clothes and moldy books, etc. that you know no one is coming back for) so I guess it is better that people take it than it goes in a landfill somewhere. I have also bid on things at the auction - it is exactly like I described above - a crowd of people standing around an unorganized pile of stuff, while the auctioneer holds something up. Bidding usually starts at a dollar. The winning bidder hands over cash and puts his new item in a pile -- by the end of the auction, there are piles of people's wins all over the place. I have seen some really nice furniture go for very cheap (most of the other bidders are dealers looking to buy low for a profit, so it is not hard to outbid them if it is something you want for yourself.) But I have also seen them auction TOTAL junk -- furniture that is moldy or falling apart, broken glass patio tables, etc. In fact one day they auctioned a plastic covered cat litterbox that still had litter and cat poop in it. No, I am not kidding and no it did not sell LOL! I think they literally load the truck up at a house cleanout and bring it directly to the auction as is -- thus the litterbox full of poop etc. At one point, I was waiting around to bid on one oak schoolhouse chair that matched my kitchen chairs. The lot before it was 4 kind of ugly folding chairs from the 40s. When those didn't get bids, the auctioneer added my oak chair to the lot. I was the only bidder and got all 5 chairs for a dollar. I had no use for the 4 folding chairs and when a guy next to me saw that I was planning to leave them behind, he asked if he could have them and I gave them to him. I ended up with another chair for my kitchen table for the sum total of $1 and he ended up with 4 free folding chairs. So anyhow, that might be more than you wanted to know but there you go.