Garage Sales and African Violets

Mom and I ventured out on Saturday, May 3rd for the annual Highway 38 garage sales. Now this is the 5th year for this and it is a BIG deal to Pendleton. The town practically shuts down for it--just like during the Heritage Fair. I guess small towns can do that--you know so people can buy other people's crap.

A couple of thoughts on garage sales on the highway:

• It's on the highway, where there are few stops and the speed limit is 55. At times, I felt oddly unsafe while traversing the 2 lane road to look at someone's trash.


• It's on the highway, where there are generally not neighborhoods or subdivisions. We would go for quite sometime before finding the next sale. We even ventured miles from 38 looking for the posted barn sale or huge sale.


• The happens from Noblesville to New Castle. We made it from Noblesville to Pendleton; Lapel runs through it. This is the country--farms, trucks, and livestock. We're not only looking at other people's cast-offs, we were looking at country-kitschy cast-offs.

Don't get me wrong: we had a good time and found a few good things, but the majority wasn't all that great. It was open on Friday and I think the good stuff went that day.

But the find of the day, in my opinion, was the biggest African Violet (above) that I have ever seen. I purchased it from this oh-so-adorable lady in Clarksville. She was the cutest thing and grew all of her African Violets herself. She told us how to take a leaf and create a new plant. And, BONUS, since the violets had only ever been given rain water, she gave me a gallon of rain water to take with me to keep them happy.