"Fall-O-Ween" -- Haunted House, Spirits, and a Terror

Here is the shelf that I like to pretend is a mantel.  It's decked out for "Fall-O-Ween".  Fall and Halloween combined. The turkey sneaked in a little early because I like his colors.  The painting is here year around because it looks exactly like the place where we used to camp.  Mom and I planted mint right along side the creek, just by the little land bridge.  I don't know who painted it and couldn't believe it looked just like the creekside camp.

 

Haunted birdhouse?  No.  My dad made it years ago from cedar shake shingles.  The verdigris copper at the door was there to keep other birds from enlarging the opening.  It is a wren house that was in the pear tree at my mom and dad's for about 40 years.  I treasure it too much to put it out in a tree, so it's here on the shelf year around.

The little kitties on the very old trade card are investigating a crock similar to the one that is on the shelf.  I collect old post cards that picture things that I have or collect.

 Spirits were held in this old jug.  Irish Whisky that is.  This old jug was found underground at a construction site just 11 blocks from the St. Louis River Front.  It's broken, but it has personality.  I'm thinking that it had even more "personality" before it was empty.
The red, blue, and cream colored round box is made of painted wood.  On the bottom of it, you can see the growth rings of the tree that it was made from.  It's from the thrift shop mentioned on a past post about the giant spatterware coffee pot and the blue and white tin.  It is one of my favorite thrifting haunts.

Isn't this little vintage Scottie a cutie?  Can you just imagine what a real terrier would do about that Archie black kitty.  I am sure he would be a Terror.

A bowl of persimmons from the backyard here at Persimmon Moon Cottage.  There is only one that I would trust to eat (and did).  It is (was) the ugly, shriveled, dark orange one.  If you have never tasted an American persimmon, they are very sweet, not at all tart, with a rather jam-like consistency.  I always imagined that they were probably a very welcomed sweet treat for the Native Americans and early settlers.  They absolutely must be soft and mushy and shriveled and ugly before you eat them.  If you ever get one that isn't ripe, your mouth and throat will be puckered, as if from alum, for longer than you can stand it.  Here, in Missouri, the trees grow really well and are tenacious. Persimmon wood is so tough that they made golf clubs from it.  One year when my son was little,  he planted dozens of the seeds in my flower bed (unbeknownst to me).  That summer, they all sprouted into trees, over and over and over again, in my flower bed.  I think to this day some of them continue to return, or maybe the squirrels have planted new ones. 

At any rate, Happy Fall-O-Ween!