Estate Sale Garden Goodies

Saturday morning I had a limited window of opportunity for treasure hunting. I had a 1st birthday party to attend for my absolutely adorable nephew at 10:00. If ever there was a worthy cause to disrupt my Saturday morning second-hand shopping therapy, this is surely it.

I knew I would be cutting it close and if I did nothing else, I wanted to hit up an estate sale that started at 9:00 in the next town over. So I had to have everyone at home ready to go to the party before I skipped out. The baby woke up late so I didn't actually leave my house till about five of nine. I was afraid I'd end up waiting in a line at that point. My fears came true. Sure enough, I had to park 1/4 mile down the street from the house so I literally ran along the side of the road to get there quicker. And this was the line of impatient shoppers that beat me.

I was handed ticket #56. They only let in 10 - 12 people at a time so it wasn't until after 9:30 that I was actually let in the front door. Thanks to the ad I knew exactly where I was heading first. Out back to the gardening stuff to hopefully get the most bang for my buck. It took me 15 minutes to gather up the things I was interested in, get pricing for all of them (because of course none of the things I wanted were pre-priced), decide what things were a rip-off to be left behind, get my sale ticket written up, and somehow carry it all upstairs to the register. I passed too many other treasures I was tempted to stop and look at but I had no time or room left in my arms.

Back upstairs, I had to wait in line again to pay. It was practically 10:00 as I was dragging my stash out the door, across their driveway and down the road to my car. I booked it home, unloaded the goods, loaded up hubby, two kids and the gift, went to pick up the third kid from a sleepover and got to the party unfashionably late just after 10:30. I'm not proud of that.

But I am proud of what I was able to score. First, a couple of garden obelisks.

For now they are just thrown in my garden to take a picture but they won't stay there so close together. I'd been hoping to come across something like these or a trellis for my morning glories and clematis vines, of which the former has yet to emerge from the ground. For the past several years I had been using a couple of wooden grills that were the size for a sliding glass door. Of course I'd gotten these for a couple bucks at a yard sale.

But these were finally falling apart so badly this year that they were no longer usable. I'm still on the lookout for more of this kind of thing or lattice work or more obelisks for the peas and beans we started indoors (of which only half have sprouted...so far...).  Gotta move these outside!

I also got another old galvanized watering can for $2. It's a little rusty but that just adds to the charm. Have I mentioned my love of all things galvanized tin or zinc? I've nestled this in on my porch.

I decided to take this set of garden markers for herbs for $2.

And last but not least, these three garden rakes for $2 each.

Let's just say these will not be uesd for raking. Stay tuned for more on those in a future post!

So, provided I had only 15 minutes to shop an estate sale, not bad, not bad.