Junk in the Grove

Doug and I finally made it to Shupps Grove up in Adamstown, Pa. yesterday.  We had gone in April but beat their opening date by a week. 

 Yesterday was a gorgeous day, and the ride there from Delaware is breathtakingly beautiful.

We made an unexpected stop on the way at a huge Amish "yard sale," complete with ponies hitched to carts, a John Deere engine powering an ice cream maker, and miles of chicken BBQing on grills.  Most of the stuff for sale wasn't our style, but we bought this great galvanized tub--complete with soil, cherry tomato and pepper plants, and flowers--for $15:

Once we got to Shupps Grove, we immediately hunted for the bathrooms and stumbled on what turned out to be my favorite part of the whole place--a shop in an adorable little cottage filled with items made from repurposed junk, plus junk you could buy to make your own fun items. Doug took this picture of me right before we went in and discovered the magic:

Knobs, corbels, springs, stakes, keys, pool balls, boxes, pots, rope, vines, watering cans, bedpans, golf clubs, ladders--the list of cool stuff just goes on. We bought this cute piece of garden art, which had been reduced for Fathers Day:

We also got this beautiful hummer feeder that an artisan had made from a glass, a cruet, and beads. We had hummers in our yard last summer, so we're hoping they'll like this funky feeder as much as they liked the standard plastic ones with the red trays:

From some of the other vendors, we bought this cute little ladder and licorice box to use on the deck with flowers--a visit to Home Depot this morning filled it out with New Guinea impatiens and some herbs. I also raided the garage for the copper spiral chain hanging on the ladder. 

That turned out to be a bad idea because Doug had saved it from a job he did when he was still working as a machinist, and he wanted to photograph it in its entire length, as it had come off the job in one very long piece. He has since forgiven me for defiling it:

All of this new stuff looks great with the rest of our garden treasures, including the bathtub that we found in the garage after we bought our house.  We used it two or three time to hold drinks for parties, then decided to leave it out and fill it with soil and flowers:

We also found some marble landscape markers in our yard when we moved in, so Doug rigged up one of them with this sundial that we bought at an estate sale:

It says "Grow old along with me, the best is yet to be."

I hope to grow old with Doug, but I guess I better be more prudent about plundering his stock in the garage.