This Week's Finds

Coming home from running errands on Tuesday night, I passed an interesting-looking pile of trash. My car slowed down and pulled into a driveway several doors down in spite of the little voice in my head saying, "Come on. That's not really a leaded glass window! Who would throw that out? It's probably just one of those interior bifold doors where the plexiglass is doctored to look like it's leaded."

"I knew it!" My boyfriend laughed, "As soon as I saw this, I knew you'd turn back to look."

Well, good thing I did. It's not quite a leaded glass window-- but it is an oak cabinet door with leaded glass! Many of the old houses around here were built with these cabinets surrounding a large dining room window. I can't see where the knob used to be on the "good" side, but on the interior you can see the telltale holes from the hinge hardware.

Why would someone throw out anything this cool? Good question. Apparently they were annoyed by these two little cracks in the glass... even though I couldn't push any glass pieces out when I tried. I wasn't sure what I was going to do with it when I first brought it home... but upon measuring I discovered that it happens to be 5ft tall. My own large picture window happens to be 5ft wide. So even though its panes are hexagonal and my own leaded glass windows have oval designs I think it will look lovely hanging at the top of my dining room window.

When we picked up the leaded glass, we found these interesting Asian screen panels stacked up underneath it. There are four of them, with these carvings on the front and a simple line-drawing-style carving (brown lines on a black background) on the reverse. The feet of each panel are brass, but they must have hung from something as well because there is an eyebolt at the top of each panel.

One panel looks like a fist went through the line-drawing side and cracked a bit of the ornate side. I don't particularly like the soft colors but I like the cranes and leaves... so I'm going to fill in the crack and repaint the panels to liven it up and hide my fix at the same time. Not sure where they're going quite yet, but the repair will be a winter project so I have time to think about it.

These last finds actually did lighten my wallet--but thanks to end-of-season sales, it didn't take out a huge chunk. (Less than $30 including tax, so not too bad at all.)

Here you see (4) 1-gallon euphorbia 'Efanthia,' (3) 1-gallon 'Purple Volcano' savlia lyrata, (2) pints of hens-and-chicks, and (1) 5-gallon 'Petit Bleu' caryopteris. All are destined for my front garden, where I hope that they will happily reside near the likes of culinary sage, oakleaf hydrangea, and 'Golden Sword' yucca.

The giant pile to the left of the shrub and salvia consists of euphorbia flowerstalks. They had become so unwieldy and top-heavy that I'm sure many people didn't even know what kind of plant was under all of that stuff as they perused the clearance aisles. I was amazed at the amount of detritus produced so I included it in the picture.

By the way, the half-eaten chewy on the lower left is my Assistant Gardener's contribution to this composition. Apparently it's not enough that she steals garden produce--now she feels she has to have a say in my blog posts, too! Next thing you know she'll be telling me what to plant against my new fence... :)