Peony Festival
Posted by Adam A. Ries in Other on June 3, 2011
If you read the title and thought, “what in the world is a Peony and why is there a festival for it?,” you are obviously not familiar with Van Wert County, Ohio. So let me explain. A peony is a flower; a huge flower, with blossoms between 4 and 7 inches big! And boy are they strong smelling! Just place a few in a vase on the table and your whole kitchen will be smelling sweet in no time. Just be sure to shake off each flower before you bring them into the house, as they are usually covered in large black ants. For some reason, ants really like peony plants and apparently they live pretty harmoniously together. Although we never could get them to grow while I was a child, the house I live in now has several large peony shrubs thriving in the back yard.
So why do we Van Wertians have a festival each June named for this plant?
Apparently back in the day, like over 100 years ago, Van Wert had huge commercial peony farms where the plants were grown for both the flowers and the seeds. In 1902, Van Wert officially named June 2 as Peony Sunday, but it wasn’t until the 1930’s that the Men’s Garden Club decided to provide entertainment for the hundreds of visitors who would visit the county each year to see the farms in blume. It was during this time that Van Wert became known as the Peony Capital of the World. Thus the Peony Festival was born. During the 30’s, it was a huge annual event, with one parade in the afternoon and a nighttime parade with the floats all lit up with lights. Each parade had more than 40 floats from all over the country and more than 45 marching bands. In 1938, at the height of the festival, a national newspaper claimed that the Van Wert Peony Festival had more floats than the Mardi Gras parade! Alongside the festival was a beauty pageant, with the winner being crowned Queen Jubilee, named after the Jubilee Peony.
Queen Jubilee Float, 1960 Parade
The festival ended with the arrival of WWII, but was revived in the mid 50’s by local businessmen. In 1959, it is estimated that over 200,000 visitors came to attend the parade and weekend festivities. But the commercial flower farms closed during those years and 1960 was the last festival for over 30 years. It was brought back again in 1992 and has been growing strong since then. The pageant is now a scholarship competition for senior girls from several area high schools. The festival lasts an entire weekend again, with an art show on beautiful historic Main Street, concerts in downtown Fountain Park, a judged peony flower show, quilt show, garden tours of local homes, a fun run and much more! Years past have also included a car show and special exhibits at the Wassenberg Art Center. And of course, the parade is Saturday at 5pm, down beautiful Washington Street. The city estimates that in the past few years, we have seen numbers close to 70,000 visitors! (That’s quite a lot of people for a county whose population is barely 30,000.)
For more information, check out the Van Wert Convention & Visitors Bureau‘s June Events or the Van Wert Independent online newspaper. See you at the Parade!
You’re Invited!
Posted by Adam A. Ries in DIY, Home Improvement on June 1, 2011
That title is actually referring to two events. Allow me a medium length post to explain.
Summer has unofficially began. As I sit here writing this post, my back and shoulder are aching from replacing two very large windows this past Memorial Day weekend. But, on a celebratory note, those very large windows were the very last two left to replace! (Click here to read about how we measured for and chose new windows or click on this link to read about how time consuming they were to install.) After 6 rolls of self adhesive window wrap, 19 tubes of silicon caulk, and more broken shingles than I know what to do with, all of the windows are finished. On the outside, that is. As you can read here, each of the windows had mis-matched woodwork on the inside so we removed it all. But replacing that will be an ongoing project on days when I can’t work outside on anything else. Now what about this invitation?
With the windows installed and those warm summer days in our grasp, it is time to begin thinking about painting the house. As was common with small homes built in the decade following the end of WWII, our home is shingled with tall cedar shakes as you can see in these “before” and “current” pictures of the house.
Before: How the house looked last summer.
Current: How the house looks now.
As we had to blend new shingles with old shingles around the new windows, the house is needing a consistent color scheme. A previous owner painted the shingles probably 15 or so years ago to a pale cream color. A safe color, but not at all dramatic. Homes built in this style would have originally been natural cedar brown or bright pastel in color (as some of our neighbor’s homes still are – dark brown, reddish brown, blue-gray, grass-green, pinky-peach, sunshine yellow, etc). We are starting to see the paint they used was not a high quality product as it has faded badly in some areas and is beginning to peel in others. So this past weekend we hit the local Sherwin-Williams store to begin our color scheme search. That is how this post title ties in. We have decided on two color schemes we all seem to like; one is a bit safe while the other makes a bolder statement. Both will vastly improve the look of the home and add some much needed curb appeal while protecting the cedar shingles from the weather. So you are invited to vote in the poll below as to which color scheme you like better! And later in the summer, feel free to join us for a painting party – BYOB (bring your own brush)!
Here are the two photographs (both from Sherwin-Williams exterior color schemes books) of color schemes we like with a breakdown of the colors for each.
Color Scheme One:
This house is the epitome of traditional suburbia today. Greige on greige on greige. With a traditional color door. With this color scheme as inspiration, our colors would be:
Main house color (shingles). Tony Taupe, #7038, by Sherwin-Williams.
Secondary house color (gables). Accessible Beige, #7036, by Sherwin-Williams.
Shutters (which we will have to purchase and paint). Van Dyke Brown, #7041, by Sherwin-Williams.
Front door (and side door). Arresting Auburn, #6034, by Sherwin-Williams.
Now, onto Color Scheme Two:
Taken almost color for color out of another color scheme book, it has much more punch and personality. I added a slightly lighter color for contrast at the gables and a bolder door color. This color scheme looks so much better in the photograph, I don’t think computer screens represent the mushroom color very well).
Main house color (shingles). Portabello, #6102, by Sherwin-Williams.
Secondary house color (gables). Sands of Time, #6101, by Sherwin-Williams.
Shingles (which we would purchase and then paint). Urbane Bronze. #7048, by Sherwin-Williams.
Front Door (and side door). Fireweed, #6328, by Sherwin-Williams.
So there you have it. The two color schemes we are debating. And by debating, I mean we think we already know which one we like best, but aren’t rushing into this. We purchased Color to Go samples from the store this past weekend, and will be trying out swatches on the outside of the house sometime soon (that is if the rain holds off. We had over 9″ of rain during the month of May).
Remember to vote in the poll, leave a comment, and get those paint brushes ready for an old fashioned paintin’ party sometime between June/July!
Glass Recycling
Posted by Adam A. Ries in Exterior on May 10, 2011
I shared in my last post about how difficult it has been finding someone or someplace that takes old window glass. Not just takes old window glass, but recycles old window glass. As you can see below, replacing all the windows in a small ranch house means quite a stack of old windows.
After a few days of searching the internet for a company nearby and making a few dozen phone calls, I think I found one.
Dlubak Glass Company of Ohio. Their website boasts about how many types of glass they recycle and sell as cullet, or crushed glass, to manufacturers all over the United States. The best part? Their Ohio facility is just over an hour from me, located in Upper Sandusky. I called them late last week to ask about how to go about bringing old windows in. Although they informed me they don’t pay very much per pound for window glass, they do accept it. They just asked that I remove the glass from each window sash.
It will probably be a few weeks yet until I take a Saturday morning drive with a van full of glass, but I will sleep much better at night knowing that I saved that much waste from the landfill. I am first going to try to give the windows away on FreeCycle or Craigslist, but most of them are in such horrible condition that I can’t imagine anyone would want them.
In this whole search process, I was disappointed how many area municipal recycling services plainly told me that window glass could not be recycled. Wrong. It can be, just not by that county’s facility. I am thinking of calling each recycling center back and informing them that they are wrong and that in the future they should recommend Dlubak Glass. Not that every DIY enthusiast is as recycle-happy (crazy?) as I am, but it disturbs me to think of how many people might choose to recycle their old windows but were plainly told it can’t be done.
Now for some as-promised statistics on glass recycling.
- Glass never “wears out.” It can be recycled indefinitely.
- Using 50% recycled glass means cutting the amount of raw materials created through mining waste by 75%.
- Using recycled glass uses only about 68 – 75% as much energy as producing new glass.
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