Grow Your Veggies, Eat Your Veggies

This is the time of year for gardens. My backyard is large and woodsy and semi-rural, so we get a lot of wildlife...turkeys, deer, squirrels, raccoons, chipmunks, and of course, birds. One year we even saw a red fox and two babies!

 

castandcrew

In my mind I would love to have a vegetable garden,

 CabinetofTreasures

 but it is a lot of work to maintain and, most importantly, it would need to be completely fenced in to protect it from the critters. So instead we have some flowers and bushes and loads of trees.

My favorite veggies would have to be the salad kind,

randomretro

like cucumbers,

 CurioCabinet

tomatoes,

victorianbuttons
(Aren't these so fun?!)

carrots,

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  (with pickles, and why not?!)

radishes,

WiseApple

and, of course lettuce.

The Trunk Trader 

(There are so many fun vintage lettuce items on Etsy!)

I tend to be lazy about salad dressing and generally don't make it from scratch, but it is good to do it once in a while. That would be a whole other post though, so I'll leave it at this.

Fishies!

The other day, my hubby decided to finally give up his old (antique? vintage?) rusty fishing tackle box, from oh so many years ago. We opened it and he educated me on the names and functions of the goodies inside. Some were junk and others were quite fun. The fun ones I have decided to sell in my Etsy shop.

Creek Chubsucker

While perusing the Internet in search of suitable public domain background material in order to take a memorable photo of the sinkers and swivels, I came across these fish pictures that I found entrancing. 

 

Brook Trout 

The subtle colors, fine detail, and simplicity of them appealed to me. They are educational, yet entertaining. The names can be quite whimsical as well.

Blueback Herring

Brown Bullhead

According to the images website, BestPhotos, from where these pictures were found, these were commissioned by the Fish and Wildlife Service in the 1970s (which makes them vintage; hence the tie-in to this blog). The originals are kept at the D.C.Booth Fish Hatchery in Spearfish, South Dakota (appropriate name, don't you think?).

Alewife

Now I have never been fishing , nor do I ever intend to. My take on it is that it would be boring, stinky and messy.  But I do love to eat fish and so I can appreciate these wonderful creatures in that sense.

Alligator Gar

Most of the fishing accoutrements that were the catalyst for this posting aren't quite ready for prime-time yet, as I still need to edit the photos and write the copy.  So if you are into fishing equipment, or if you like to repurpose fishing bits and pieces into another entity, like jewelry, check out my Etsy store in a few days. The hooks, lines, and sinkers will be bobbing to the surface soon.

Pumpkinseed

Here are the  SINKERS, waiting for a good home...

Wordless Wednesday

 One starfish

Starfish family