Spaces Comfort Jump

SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS

11E

SATURDAY, APRIL 7, 2007

D

Better look through ‘trash’ again There is a saying: “One person’s trash is another person’s treasure.” Collectors understand this better than most other people. Old ads, milk bottles, worn shoes, spark plugs, barbed wire, insulators, credit cards, swizzle sticks, key-chain tags and empty boxes that once held bullets all are seriously collected by groups who have even formed clubs to trade information. ANTIQUES & Did you ever COLLECTING think of saving old paper cups? Not just any paper cup. It should be decorated to show it was used at an event like a World’s Fair or the Olympics. Or it should have an important brand name or picture celebrities. The cup’s decoration must indicate either an event or a date. The Dixie cup, one of the world’s oldest paper cups, was just an idea in 1907. The Public Cup Vendor Co. was incorpo-

RALPH AND TERRY KOVEL

KING FEATURES SYNDICATE

This Tarzan ice-cream cup was made by Lily-Tulip Cup Corp. in the 1930s. Hake’s Americana and Collectibles of Timonium, Md., priced it at $518. You can find paper-cup collectibles for much less, but this one is rare and in mint condition. rated in 1909 to make the cups, and by 1919 it was named the Dixie Cup Co. At first no one wanted disposable cups, but during the flu epidemic of 1918, laws banned public communal drinking glasses. Soon paper cups were also used to hold ice cream and other products, and

more companies started manufacturing throwaway containers. In 1930 pictures of animals or presidents were added to Dixie cup ice-cream lids. Movie stars were featured in 1933 and war planes and ships in the 1940s. Sample prices for cups from past years by various manufacturers include a Coca-Cola cup, 1960, $20; Popeye on a Happy Birthday cup, 1950s, $8; Dairy Queen cup, 1949, $8; and Votes for Women, Empire States, 1915, $200. It pays to save trash. Q. I am 89 and still have a 1902 bathing suit that belonged to my mother. It’s a navy-blue sailor suit with white trim, leggings and high, laced shoes. The shoes are not in good shape, but the rest of it is. What do you think I could sell it for? A. Many suits the age of your mother’s came with leggings and shoes. Women took the shoes off, then went into the water, leggings and all. Collectors of vintage clothing

CURRENT PRICES Current prices are recorded from antiques shows, flea markets, sales and auctions throughout the United States. Prices vary in different locations because of local economic conditions. ■ Piggy bank, ‘I Made Chicago Famous,’ black, cast iron, Arcade, c. 1900, 4 inches, $255. ■

Deb-U-Teen Lunch and Thermo bottle kit, Styrofoam thermos, Hasbro, 1950s, $455.

■

Cast-iron doorstop, English bulldog puppies in barrel, signed ‘Steacy & Wilton Co., Wrightsville, Pa., copyright 1932,’ 63⁄4 by 81⁄4 inches, $695. — Ralph and Terry Kovel

might pay $100 or more for your suit. Write to Kovels, San Antonio Express-News, King Features Syndicate, 300 W. 57th St., 15th Floor, New York, NY 10019.

‘Lifetime of love and collecting’ fill home CONTINUED FROM 10E

acres. She and her husband, Bill, who died in 1996, restored a 1914 hospital in town and lived there 13 years. “When I walked in this awfullooking thing and I saw the walls, I said, ‘Whoa. Wait a minute,’ ” she recalls, noting the 18-inchthick double brick walls. Gorman first settled into a three-room cottage on the property, formerly the display house at Apelt Armadillo Farm. The space that Gorman filled to brimming with folk art is previously where armadillo shells were transformed and sold as baskets, lampshades, ashtrays and purses. She lived there as work progressed on the main house and the property. A building that housed armadillos — an eyesore with a critterkeeping 10-foot-deep ditch and 10foot-tall fence around it — was demolished. From it, Gorman salvaged wide pecky cypress boards that now enclose the space under the stairs in the main house. The restored one-room rock building by the highway, formerly an armadillo barbecue stand, will become an antiques shop. One of Gorman’s greatest challenges in the renovation was adding a kitchen, pantry and laundry room to the main house. Only a slab remained where the original kitchen had been. “Over a period of a hundred-something years, you just do what you have to,” she says of the evolution of the house. The light-filled addition that spans the back of the house marries well with the original structure, thanks to carefully chosen materials and antique furnishings. Bricks laid in a herringbone pattern complement pumpkin-colored cabinets and maple counters in the kitchen. (Gorman says feistily that she wouldn’t reveal her custom paint colors even if she remembered them, to discourage copycats.) Gorman fashioned an island from three pieces. The work area across from the sink is an eightdrawer chest with bin pulls — al-

GLORIA FERNIZ/STAFF

Assorted churns and firkins sit alongside a kitchen island that comprises three separate pieces. Gorman added the kitchen to her 1898 house.

SEE FOR YOURSELF

ing what she owns. “I wouldn’t have anything you couldn’t touch Harriette Gorman’s house will be or use.” Though it pained her, she says, among six houses featured on she cut up handmade crewel fabthe Comfort Heritage ric to make curtains for the living Foundation Tour of Homes. room and library. A smart red When: Noon-5 p.m. April 14. and teal plaid loveseat in the liTickets: In advance, $12. Call Taxi brary wears part of Gorman’s large collection of homespun fabBreithaupt at (830) 995-5018. ric — cloth pioneers wove from Day of tour, $15, starting at 11 thread they spun from flax or cota.m. at Comfort State Bank ton they grew or wool from their Building, High and Seventh sheep. She notes the sun will destreets. teriorate the cloth, so she plans to have shutters made for the winAlso: Tour booklets available at dow by the loveseat. Comfort State Bank Building. The original house on the propmost brand new by her standards erty, a log cabin built in 1854, was at an estimated 80 years old. taken down and reconstructed log Against the back of the chest, she by log as a back entrance to the set a German desk top that looks main house. Like the rest of the like a small trunk atop a low New house, the buttery — the New England table. Above it hangs a England term for a pantry — is light fixture Gorman had made filled with relics from ages past. from a cone-shaped fire bucket. Here, Gorman incorporated a set One of Gorman’s many pas- of stairs that years ago found sions is lighting, and she has ev- their way from a New England erything from small oil-burning house to an antiques shop here. betty lamps to an 18th-century The faded blue paint and a tread scissor light to a goat-skin shaded worn thin from generations of lamp she had fashioned from a use attracted her, though “everybrass eagle finial atop a piece of body in town thought I was crazy tramp art. She also collects — and for buying it.” uses — Pennsylvania redware In their current home, the pottery, pewter, early clothes stairs sit against a wall and rise hangers and treenware, kitchen- to the ceiling, their newfound ware and implements fashioned purpose to display other objects from single pieces of wood. and to show off the patina that Gorman is emphatic about us- comes with time and use.

“I just lug stuff around until I find a use for it,” says Gorman, who began collecting early American antiques more than a halfcentury ago. Her love of old things began with a black iron teakettle she discovered in a junkyard in Tyler. “I thought that was the living end,” she says. “I couldn’t wait to get home and plant red geraniums in it.” Gorman no long has the teakettle — “I wish I did” — but she lives surrounded by antiques and the history they impart. The entryway is filled with pieces from the William and Mary era. Her bedroom is Queen Anne. Upstairs, there’s a Shaker room. Portraits of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln hang in the library, a front room fitted with custom bookcases painted a rich teal and filled with books about historical figures. She used the same teal color on wainscoting, dentil molding and beams. A 48-star flag stands in one corner, and a portrait of Thomas Jefferson hangs above the loveseat. “This is the love of my life,” she says, admiring the Jefferson portrait. “He’s my favorite. He was an ingenious American.” A table in the center of the room displays old marbles and other games, even an old deck of playing cards, showing that early Americans weren’t all work. She marvels at the handwork on rugs and the craftsmanship of the furniture. “It was made on someone’s fingers,” she says often as she looks at various pieces in the house. With every item, she can relate a story about where she found it, how it was made or how it was used. “What you have here is a lifetime of love and collecting,” Gorman says. And she’s not done. There’s the barn to renovate and the garden to create at the place she’s contemplating naming Gorman-Dillo Farm “because I’m the only one who cared enough to fix it up.” [email protected]

Feeding nitrogen and iron: There’s a trick to it Our plants are growing at 90 mph. Warm weather and recent rains have combined to give us maximum spring growth, or so it would seem. Still, there are some things you can do to have even more success with the plants in your landscape and garden, and most of them revolve around proper feedings. Plants need nitrogen to produce new stems and leaves. Therefore, anytime you want a plant to grow more vigorously, the answer you’ll hear everywhere will be to apply a high-nitrogen fertilizer. However, there’s a lot more to the story than that. You see, the middle number in the threenumber fertilizer analysis represents the phosphorus content of the fertilizer. Phosphorus promotes roots, flowers and fruit, so the normal conclusion would be that you need to add more phosphorus to your flower and vegetable gardens. Right? Well, not so fast. Phosphorus may already be there in plentiful quantities. In fact, your soil may actually have too much phosphorus, to the point that it adversely affects the growth of your plants. The only way you can tell whether you have too much phosphorus is with an accurate soil test. It’s a good idea to have one run every two or three

years just to monitor things. Phosphorus tends to accumulate in clay soils. It leaches away in loams and sands but, again, the only way to tell for sure is to have the soil tested. If the report says you need to apply only nitrogen, believe DOWN TO EARTH it and follow its guidelines no matter what type of plant you’re trying to grow. Texas has several highquality, nitrogen-only fertilizers. Ideally, half or more of the nitrogen should be in slow-release form. It may seem odd to add only nitrogen to a rose garden or tomato patch, but if that’s what the soil test suggests, you need to follow its findings. The other critical element that is often deficient is iron. Its story is equally complicated, but boiling it all down to the basics, iron comes in two forms: soluble and insoluble. It will be in the soluble form when soils are acidic, so plants will be able to assimilate any amount that they need. In alkaline soils, however,

NEIL

SPERRY

the iron becomes insoluble and some plants will begin to show iron deficiency. First signs of shortages will appear as yellowing of the end leaves. As the problem progresses, the blades will turn more yellow but the veins will remain dark green. Eventually the leaves will turn pale green all over. In severe cases, they will even be almost white, then browned and scorched. Iron deficiency is also called chlorosis, and plants that are likely to show it around San Antonio include wisterias, ligustrums, mimosas, bald cypresses, box elders, cherry laurels and, for anyone who tries to grow them, azaleas, camellias and dogwoods. It can show up in many other species, but the pattern of yellowing will always be the same; that is, on the newest growth first. You might figure you can just add a little iron to solve all these shortages, but again, it’s not all that easy. If you’re gardening in an alkaline soil and if you add more iron, it may become insoluble, too, just like the iron that is already there. So you need to add iron in tandem with sulfur. The sulfur acts to form sulfuric acid when it gets wet, and that will help keep the iron available, at least tempora-

rily. The best ways to solve iron deficiency follow different paths. You can replace the alkaline soil entirely. Create a planting mix that has generous amounts of organic matter. Material such as peat moss, compost and pine bark mulch are naturally acidic, so iron remains soluble in them. Of course, they’re not inexpensive, so you can only justify going to those measures for plants that will stay small and whose roots won’t outgrow the prepared planting medium. Best trick of all: Stay away from plants you know need high levels of iron in the first place. After all, why create a problem when it’s just as easy to create a solution? Proper feeding is not a difficult or complicated task. It just requires common sense and a little bit of study. From that point on, your plants will take care of the rest. Neil Sperry is publisher of Neil Sperry’s Gardens magazine. His Down to Earth column appears Saturdays in S.A. Life. Though time does not permit Sperry to answer individual gardening questions, readers may suggest topics for future columns by sending him an e-mail at [email protected].

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