Autumn Tableau

Yesterday morning the sunlight was falling so nicely across our hall table that I couldn't resist taking some pictures. Then I began thinking about the collection of stuff on the tabletop -- each of those items has a story behind it.

First of all, the lilies -- I found them while I was walking the dog. And no, they weren't growing in anyone's garden. They were lying abandoned on the public bench at the top of the street, amid unwrapped florist's paper. Who knows what happened? Maybe someone got flowers and didn't want them. Maybe a thief took them from the recipient's doorstep not knowing what they were, and left them behind after unwrapping them and discovering nothing of value. In any case, no one was around to claim them so I brought them home. We've had them more than a week and they're reaching the end of their time.

I made that pencil cup in pottery class in the late 1990's. Yes, I went through a pottery-making period. I was never very good at it, as all my poor friends who were burdened with my creations will attest.

The orange ball radio I've had since childhood. I wrote about it here.

Behind the radio and the pencil cup is a framed autumn leaf that my mom brought me from North Carolina way back in the late 1970s. She bought it at a shop, and it had been preserved somehow -- I think glycerin was involved? -- so that it retained its color and some flexibility. In the 40 years since, it has remained amazingly durable and only recently started to fade. Here's a scan, with the colors slightly enhanced to show how it looked when I first received it:

Pretty cool, huh? That leaf is older than Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake or Lady Gaga, to pick a few people at random.

The photos are of me, my brother and my mom, and were taken, developed and printed by my dad back in the 1970s. The packet of lavender seeds was included with a new pair of pants that Dave recently bought online. (Odd, but we'll plant them!) The little blue doll, which looks like a potato with pigtails and an embroidered face, we found on the street -- obviously someone's handmade creation. We tried to get Olga to play with it but she wasn't interested.

The badger card came from York. You've seen it before here. And finally, the tablecloth is a piece of wax cloth -- a sort of batik, at least in its original, authentic form -- that I bought in Ghana back in 1994.

That's probably more than you ever wanted to know about our hall tabletop! (And this is only half of it!)