Mark goes out multiple times a day to photograph the project on our road. Usually he's just checking to see if they're doing something interesting or something he hasn't seen before. Recently he and a neighbor were watching the excavator when it exposed this stash of old glass containers; possibly an old ash pit.
Lots of them were broken . . .
but some were still intact.
When the crew realized the guys were interested in the find, they gave Mark and our neighbor a few of the bottles.
Mark cleaned them up a bit and left them on the deck where I discovered them.
I cleaned them up some more; mostly just removing dirt. There's a lot of marks that may never come off and we decided to enjoy the patina.
The greenish bottle in the back left in the photo below had a cork in its neck when it was dug out of the road. The bottle in the center back says "Valleyview Dairy /JJ Collins" while the one on the right says "Lavoris" in raised letters on the shoulder of the bottle. The bottle in the front left is a pint milk container from the old Kennedy Dairy, whose building still stands on West Washington Ave. in Madison. The other two small bottles have no markings.
It seemed obvious to me from the moment I saw them that these old bottles were perfect Monday vases.
I thought about putting them on the limestone steps outdoors or sitting on a silver tray on the gray pebble paths. Then I remembered this chrome bar cart.
I liked the contrast between the old and new glass. The flowers include large 'Summer Drummer' Alliums, small 'Millennium' Alliums and an unknown Hosta flower.
Van Engelen bulbs says Allium 'Summer Drummer' is the tallest and also the latest blooming of the large Alliums. In my garden the paper covering started to come away from the flower heads on July 4th. This is what they currently look like. Very atypical flowers but in a group in the garden they present a light and attractive effect given their size and height.