October 22, 2011

Bull Planter

How cool is this guy??? 
On the store




With some lithops!

With an air plant!





October 11, 2011

Dream Car/Zanesville, OH

So when I was driving to New Jersey from Texas, I stopped in Zanesville, OH. Why did I do that, you might ask? Well, BESIDES the standard offerings of every thriving metropolis in the coal belt, Zanesville was also the location of McCoy pottery, and I think also some other Ohio potteries of the same time period. So I wanted to stop and go to thrift stores in hopes of finding some pottery. It was kind of underwhelming. Google maps said there were three Goodwills and one other charity-related thrift store in Zanesville, but if there were, I could not find them. There were, respectively, a CVS, an empty lot, and an apartment building where three of the four were supposed to be. 1 for 4 is not such a good ratio, Google maps.
At the Goodwill that actually existed, there was a little bit of pottery but nothing crazy. I also was there at 4 p.m. on a Sunday, i.e., THE WORST time to go to a thrift store, in my opinion. I got one little green planter from Ungemach Pottery(UPCO) with a kind of cactus-y pattern. I like the green, and I think the pattern will look really nice with a cactus planted in it.





























After that, while I was driving to the supposed Goodwill that is actually a CVS, I drove past a used car lot with an AWESOME car in it. For those that do not know, one of my life goals is to own a cruck at some point. Probably an El Camino, because they are pretty much the defining vehicle of the style, but I am open to other crucks with similarly desert/ Southwestern-themed names. Also, I love the color orange.




At that point I was pretty frustrated and still had a 7 hour drive in front of me, so I headed back towards the highway. On the way I saw this awesome sign next to a church:






























The thing about any event of significance is that you HAVE to create hype. That shit had better be exclusive. If you wake up on October 27 and are like, "you know what I would really like for lunch today? Saurkraut," TOO BAD. You should have thought ahead and bought advanced tickets, because they aren't taking just anyone who shows up. Maybe if you know the bouncer or are really hot you'll be alright, I don't know.

While I was in Zanesville, I definitely did not see anyone who had used meth in the past week. Definitely not. Also did not see anyone pushing a broken push mower down the street while drinking Mountain Dew and chirping on a push-to-talk phone. Nope.

October 10, 2011

Growing Lithops: Week 7

So, I'm going to go ahead and add "putting them in your car and moving across the country" to my list of Things Not to Do With Lithops Seedlings. Of course, I knew I was going to be doing this before I planted them, and I wanted to just try it out and see what happened.

They actually did OK, and by "OK," I mean some of them survived the drive. I feel like I am not growing them in optimal conditions. They probably would like it a little warmer and more sunlight. I put them out of the balcony for a day and half when I got here so they could get some more direct sun, but then it got cold and rainy so I brought them inside.


I am viewing this first pot of seedlings as a trial run. I still have a bunch of the seeds left over from my adult plants, and I am going to order some optica rubra seeds, and maybe some other varieties, and also get some pumice to plant them in. And maybe a grow light.

                                                   Via Flickr
On a positive note though, one of my adult Lithops is getting ready to bloom! I got the pot out of its spot in the car and it has a nice little stalk starting!




I'm not sure what I should do after it blooms though... stop watering the whole pot? Try to keep watering the other ones? When I saw the blossom starting I gave the whole pot quite a bit of water in hopes that the other ones might start blooming too. I guess this is why it's a good idea to only grow one variety per pot.

Mid Century Monday


Glendale Tower, Indianapolis, IN
1968

October 6, 2011

Plant Present!

People at work got me the nicest plant friends as a going away present! With little plastic creatures in it! There is an Old Man of the Andes cactus and an Old Lady cactus, and some other cactus that looks like an octopus! I love it!

October 2, 2011

Weekend Thrift Review

I had a pretty successful weekend at the thrift stores. Once I get to New Jersey (next week yay!), I'm going to get my Etsy store set up, so I am trying to put together a decent amount of stuff to list.


Friday:
My successful stop on Friday was at the Goodwill on 410 by the North Star mall. I got two cute ceramic planters. One is an unmarked white cylinder planter. I like white planters and they are surprisingly hard to find, so whenever I find one I like I usually buy it.
The second one is an orange drip glaze planter from Jenkins Ceramics. I couldn't really find out much about Jenkins Ceramics, except that it was a pottery in California in probably the 50s or 60s, and they made this shape of planter in a bunch or different sizes.  


Saturday:
On Saturday I got the third planter in the picture from the Goodwill on Fredericksburg Rd. Brass planters like this are always kind of appealing to me, but I really liked the pattern of shapes stamped into this one.

At the Goodwill I also got a set of Georges Briard "Florette" plates, 4 bread plates (or salad plates? I need to look it up) and 4 dinner plates.


Also made some good pickups at Texas Thrift Store: Two Autumn Harvest Pyrex bowls, a Pyrex serving dish,  and also some funny divided plates that I have been looking at every time I go in there for a few weeks. 



The plates are this really cool mustard/sand color with an almost-matte glaze that I really like. I think we'll be keeping the plates, and the Pyrex will go up on the store. 

Sunday:
On Sunday I had other things to do besides just go to thrift stores, but I did go back to Goodwill to pick up this fiber art wall hanging that I saw on Friday. I was kind of reluctant about trying to fit it into my car to drive to New Jersey, but I just couldn't pass it up. I definitely don't have a place for it in the apartment, but this is exactly the kind of look I want to go for in the store- sort of med-century desert modern- so I thought this would be great for my first round of items. I love that it has the original tag and is from El Paso.