Botanic Bleu Market

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Purple Heritage Ball Jars - First Look

Thursday, March 12, 2015

Unexpected gifts lift our spirits. 
A normal day with usual routine actions 
suddenly becomes one filled with smiles and euphoric feelings. 

Sometimes I enter my name into drawings for give-aways 
from fellow bloggers, but never have any expectations of actually winning, 
especially when there are 269 entries. 
Casually, I go about my everyday activities and 
just as casually continue to read the blog with the give-away. 

T H E N... 
without expecting it, out of the bleu .... 
as I was checking my daily emails, 
I saw an email from Mary @ Home Is Where the Boat Is
with a subject line winner ball jars! 

Let me back up. 

Rather, the email was FROM Mary _________, 
a name I did not recognize,  
with a subject line winner ball jars!



Now, I've never had an email from Mary @ Home Is Where the Boat Is before. 
And, the FROM column did not say, "Mary @ Home Is Where the Boat Is." 
Only after re-reading the subject line winner ball jars! did it dawn on me. 



Excitedly, I opened the email and read, 
Hi Judith! You won a set of Purple Heritage Ball Jars! 

That's when the smiling and euphoric feelings began. 
A set of six pint-size Purple Heritage Ball Jars were on their way to me. 



Here is the first look of how the jars have made themselves at home here 
instead of at Home Is Where the Boat Is.  
The first Ball jar is a flower vase filled with daffodils 
celebrating one of the few sunny, bleu-sky days we have had 
this snow-plagued, frozen-temperature winter. 



Yes, the reproduction Heritage Ball jars feel right at home with
purple glasses, purple flower clippers, and purple toile tablecloth. 



A flower vase is just the beginning for these jars. 
My sister-in-law in Alabama picks blackberries from 
a bramble patch whose location is a family secret. 
She cans the blackberries for cobblers and 
makes home-made blackberry jelly. 



Maybe, just maybe, if I send her a couple of jars 
they will be returned this summer filled with blackberries. 
Purple, the perfect color for blackberries. 

My mother canned using Ball jars, and 
my grandmother canned using Ball jars 
as did her mother before her. 
I'm sure someone, or several someones, in my family tree 
used the original purple Ball jars in 1913-1915. 



As for the other four Ball jars, 
I have a few ideas planned for them this spring. 
I will be out-and-about tomorrow excitedly looking 
for what I have in mind for them.  


detail of toile purple tablecloth
I like that I can still get excited. 

I have to admit that life sometimes weighs me down 
and does not seem to have as much joy as it did for years. 
Then, along comes a little email that reminds me that 
one never knows what good things are still in store. 
When you least expect it, something can bring euphoric feelings. 

Thank you, Mary @ Home Is Where the Boat Is, for spreading 
some joy and laughter, joie de vivre, where it was least expected. 

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