Fall chair, among the leaves

It was an absolutely gorg day here in Toronto, more like September than November, wonderfully warm, with lots of leaves still on the trees. One of those days when you're happy to just stroll around and frolic. On my way to meet a pal, I came across tios chair right on the corner of someone's lot. It looked as though there was an open house going on, and I guess this velvety wonder was deemed inappropriate for the function.

But I thought it looked like a work of art nestled there among the leaves, it matched them so perfectly. If I didn't already have a kajillion chairs at home I may have tried to get it home somehow. Wonder if it's still sitting there or if some passerby admired it as much as I did?

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Tribute to my childhood home

This is a black and white photo taken of the back of my childhood home in 1994 (not scanned but rather I took a pic of it), just moments before my twin sis was married in our lovely backyard.

Here's that same home some 14 years later when my Mom and I went to visit it in 2008, a good eight years after they moved out. The home was empty, but it was trashed and delapitated and so sad.

And, as one of my oldest friends told me over Facebook the other day, that house has now been torn down. So I'm going to share some of my fave memories and pics of the home I grew up in and lived in until I was 19!

The First Day of School shot under the kitchen window at the back of the house (I'm on the left and my twin is on the right) was an annual ritual. This is us our first day of grade 9.

Here we are again (me on the right this time) in the front yard in April in the early-mid 1970s with our blue ponchos. Aren't we bloody cute? We grew up in the country so we played outside all the time. Every tree and field carries a lovely memory.

Our beautiful lilac bush in the front yard, close to where the poncho pic was snapped, was always a glory. We would snip the fragrant branches off and pile them in huge rose bowls placed in front of windows, so the sweet lilacy scent would blow throughout the house.

Here I am wearing an emerald green dress with mega shoulder pads (next to my Mom on the left) in the Spring of 1988, when I was a mere 18. Sigh. Collagen is another thing that's disappeared over the years.

In 2008, that same lilac bush, which had been transplanted years earlier to accommodate a new well (yes I kid you not: we grew up with a well). You can see the overgrowth and general crap littered throughout the yard.

Behind the lilac bush up a gently sloping hill was what we called The Sandpile, essentially a sandy field that farmers attempted to plant in for years. But when my sis and I were really young, it was just a sandpile, and we would play in it even though it was a good five minute walk from home. We could see the house from our vantage point up the hill, and I'll never forget Mom and her friend, who were having coffee in the house on day when we were playing in the pile, telling us  to wave our arms if we wanted help and they would see us.

By the time I was 14 when this silly pic was taken (in May of 1984 - can you see the 'rat's tail' at the back of my short hair cut? I imported the look from England a few months earlier after a school trip there and was the first in my school to have one, ahem. Then every one got one and I chopped mine off), the farmers had abandoned The Sandpile again. I used to love coming up here in my angsty teen years. I'd watch the beautiful sunsets to the west. It was calming, and a very special memory.

That sandpile in 2008: grown over. Barely recognizable; kind of like you'd image the decay described in The Day of the Triffids to unfold.

I'll end on a happier note: Christmas in the early-mid 1970s, with my twin (standing) and me (with almost blond hair? Maybe it was the light) in front of the gift that henceforth and throughout our childhood was called The Little Table. The green metal table with vinyl floral top and chair covers was set up permanently in the kitchen, and when company came over, my sisters and I would dine at it.Otherwise we'd use it for Tea Parties.

That Little Table is still in my parents' basement! My sister used it when her kids were growing up!!

More to come tomorrow. Thanks for reading.

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Bring it foreward, I say!

I was going to show you an outfit I thrifted at a thrift shop I have yet to tell you about (will do so tomorrow, promise), but apropos of yesterday's post about my folks picking wicker curbside, I had to share with you this pic of a rattan chair on the sidewalk that I saw outside my building tonight.

Reader, it was mine, picked up a few years ago for $10 at a thrift shop. I put it by the dumpster yesterday afternoon as I was in clear out mode and figured SOMEONE would pick it up. It is, after all, so 1970s chic, no? Just look at those curved lines!

Well imagine my dismay to see someone had moved it to a more prominent place curbside - and no one had picked it up by 7 p.m. tonight!

BUT there is a happy ending: just peeped out my front window and looked out on the sidewalk -- and the chair is gone. Hope it's gone to a happy home! Love sharin' that thrifty love ....

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My parents are trash pickers too!

I feel like a proud mommie. Except I'm really a proud daughter!! When I was home for Thanksgiving last weekend, I saw this wicker set on my Mom and Dad's bricked in area outside their front door. (I added the pumpkin to make it look more festive).

Readers, they trash picked it.

Well you can imagine - I couldn't have felt more proud. Sure it's a wee bit rough around the edges, fraying a bit on the legs, but good enough for outside for the kitties to languish on as they sun themselves these glorious fall afternoons.

There's even a table.

Don't get me wrong: it's not like Mom and Dad haven't trashed picked before. I year ago, methinks, I did a little post after coming home from a Thanksgiving trip showcasing the worn chairs my Mom had plucked from the trash and used as ledges for her potted flowers out on the back deck. And another time Mom took home a teak desk found curbside.

But let's just say they wouldn't have trash picked a few years ago. Granted it IS becoming more fashionable/acceptable nowadays, but well, I'd like to think I had just a wee bit of influence here - a daughter's prerogative, perhaps!

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The Storm Window Saga

A walk by the trash bin close to my place yielded this little gem this morning: old wood window panes.

My immediate thought: ahh, storm windows.

See, every spring when I was growing up in an old 1950s A-frame house, my Mom and Dad would engage in the Storm Window Ritual.

It entailed lugging a good 20 storm windows out of the garage, which had been stored there all winter, and cleaning them before putting them on the outside of each and every window in the house.

The Storm Window Ritual was one my sisters and I quickly learned to avoid partaking in when we grew old enough to understand what the saga of the storm windows was all about.

Mom and Dad would invariably end up fighting. Dad would get impatient with Mom, and Mom would get impatient with Dad for getting impatient with her.

But, seeing those windows, I became slightly nostalgic for not just the Storm Window Ritual, but also those old wood windows.

I wonder where such windows would have come from in apartment land, where I live at the moment?

Check out these three holes at the bottom of the window (the window is turned on its side here).

You flipped up that little lever to - wait for it - let the air in through the screen! So quaint! Hardly workable, though.

I have memories blowing smoke through the screens contained by old window frames such as these; I was a teen in my bedroom doing what teen invariably do ... blow smoke through windows.

But I also remember peering out them and seeing and hearing the huge trees across the road toss their treetops around in the wind at night before sleep ... so magical.

So amazing what a bunch of old windows in the trash can evoke.

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