If you have ever been to Paris in the winter (and we LOVE Paris in the Winter), you will see that all of the major and even the minor public fountains are drained and remain dry until the threat of freezing is gone.  Believe it or not, even some areas of Santa Barbara County experience temperatures below freezing.  Not joking…  Everything porous absorbs water: stone, cement, terracotta and just like an ice cube, when the water freezes, it expands.  The damage wreaked by this expansion when the item thaws ultimately ruins the piece.  Over a period of years and depending on the material, it will break down and fall apart.  The best protection for your garden products is common sense and our following tips and tricks for helping things to last.

1. Apply a high quality penetrating sealer to help eliminate the porosity of the item
2. Dry, cover or move to a protected area during times of frost
3. Do not allow pieces to become attached or fused to a frozen surface
4. Purchase frost-resistant products such as those sold and recommended by Eye of the Day
5. Maintain existing garden products just like you do your home on an annual basis
6. Send us your questions and we’ll send you our answers via this blog

Now you know.  Welcome, Winter!

After the flood, our Great Flood, we were awarded a small business loan thanks to FEMA.   Though we weren’t able to salvage the MANY barrels that floated down the Santa Ynez River to Buellton, Lompoc and beyond, we moved forward (or southward) to our new home in Carpinteria.  And to us IT WAS HUGE!  First, we scheduled a generous sale in order to relieve ourselves of inventory from the former business.  Let’s just say the merchandise didn’t exactly fit our style and vision – ours was upscale, authentic, and NO plastic.  Then we began to fill the aisles with fountains and pottery from the best California manufacturers (more about these great people later…).  Our gift shop became home to extravagantly elegant handmade birdhouses, small statuary, garden books and tools.  It began to look like Eye of the Day.

…and then…?

We had been to the Atlanta Gift Show, the San Francisco Gift Show and The Los Angeles Gift Show and soon found ourselves answering to the primal pull of Paris – talk about authentic!  En route we made a stop in Chicago where Brent was the target of a would-be pickpocketer (Brent chased him down and recovered his wallet).  And at last!  Up the stairs from the Metro and into the City of Light –Paris!  We settled in and started our education and search for all things Eye of the Day.

Many of the artisans we met on that first trip in 1999 are still with us: Terrecotte San Rocco with their excellent Galestro clay terracotta, French Anduze pots and beautiful hand painted tables and tableware from Provence.  We set our course and our precedent with this trip, we continue to pursue new items for Eye of the Day throughout Europe, but we also remain loyal to our longtime suppliers who have helped and supported us throughout difficult times and times of growth.

It is thought that the name “Daisy” is a corruption of “day’s eye”, because the whole flower head closes at night and opens in the morning.  Chaucer called it “eye of the day”.

You have been wondering, right?  Why we are called Eye of the Day?  When we started our business, after moving from the controlled chaos of Los Angeles to the subdued serenity of the Santa Ynez Valley, we were buying used wine barrels from local wineries and cutting and reselling them to nurseries as large, low cost planters.  We had a lightbulb moment and named the business Barrel Orphans.  Upon morphing into a retail business, we needed a new name, something that defined us in some way.  The eye of our lives was (and is) our daughter, Daisy…  and the pieces fell together: Garden.  Sunlight.  Beauty.  The day’s eye.  Our business.  She wasn’t so keen on having a garden store named for her, but as we grew from the small, barrel and fountain business on a corner in the Santa Ynez Valley to a respected and worldly destination with beautiful European garden ornamentation, planters and fountains (and much more), Daisy’s pride in our accomplishment grew as well.

When she was young, Daisy spent much of her time at the store and learned to work with customers, describe the way a particular fountain flowed and even wrote a column for our monthly newsletter detailing new additions to the store and our travels to find new merchandise.  We were fortunate to be able to spend time at work together as a family and know that both the business and it’s namesake were able to benefit.

In early February of 1998 we travelled to the San Francisco Gift Show and left Daisy at home with her older cousin.  While we were gone, a tremendous storm threatened Eye of the Day and ultimately devastated the property through flooding. Daisy, age eleven, rallied many of our close friends to help save whatever they could while we drove home as quickly as we could. Our hero.  Our Eye of the Day.  We had just signed a lease for the property in Carpinteria, and new adventure began…

Next: Eye of the Day goes cosmopolitan.

Inventory at Eye of the Day in 1994:

1. Wine barrels cut in half

2. Wine barrels cut in quarters

3. Wine barrels cut in three-quarters

4. Whole wine barrels

5. Mexican pottery

6. Potting soil

Inventory at Eye of the Day in 2010:

Okay.  No lists.  But LOTS MORE than in 1994.  When we first started Eye of the Day our focus was (obviously) wine barrel planters and a few pots.  That’s a story for another time.  Not too long after the store moved to Carpinteria from Santa Ynez (yet another story) we made our first trip to Europe and our lives and our store changed forever.  Our maiden trip to the Paris Gift Show spun us off to the countryside of France and that of Italy and here the story lies.

Strewn about the grounds of a walled 14^th century medieval Tuscan village, now a beautiful inn, we began to take notice of burnished russet red oil jars, or orcios.  Many of them showed production dates in the 1800s, some even in the 1700s.  And, the terracotta from which they were made was rich and warm, displaying not necessarily age, but antiquity.  It was the perfect setting to see them – we could imagine them charming the gardens of California and beyond.  We were pulled with a new focus to locate some to ship to our store and so now drove the countryside in earnest.  During that first Orcio Locating Tour we became pro at catching a tiny slice of old terracotta color in a field, on a porch, in an abandoned barn.  Once we looked in a barn and found two fantastic old farm wagons, one with faint traces of blue, red, yellow and green paint and found that the wagons were older than the 1953 the faded color depicted.  That was the year it was RE-painted.  My birth year.  The wagons had once been pulled by horses in the local village harvest parade.  But not a soul could see them stored in the old barn.  Brent used his considerable intelligence and ingenuousness and lined the way for these, the first of our antique finds, to make their way to Eye of the Day.  You will be able to see them, stored in plain sight, adding to the rich and varied weave of old and new at Eye of the Day.

We didn’t even know we were looking for them, but then… an ancient, weather-burnished Italian oil jar stood waiting for discovery.  An old wooden wagon with softly faded color appeared just inside a black, dark barn.  No… TWO wagons.  One small, aged jar next to a shop door keeping the secret of scores more hiding in a yard on a quiet, residential street on the outskirts of Athens.  We are addicted to the thrill of finding relics of another time and bringing them back to Eye of the Day for you to place in your garden as a focal point or a working element.

One of our favorite finds happened last winter.  From across a busy street, Julia pointed and we looked.  A little Greek jar invited us to come closer.  Inside the shop were a few more pots of different sizes scattered among more common antiques: furniture, tabletop ornaments, lamps, mirrors.  But the traditional Greek pots held our interest.  We began a conversation with the store owner and soon found ourselves being driven by her husband to their lovely home.  Much further than we thought we would be driven… were we safe?  Did we know what we were doing?  YES, apparently so.  Sometime later, after generous consumption of Retsina and thick, heady coffee, Julia stood on the patio overlooking the small lot next door and looked down to an excellent collection of old Greek jars.  Some large, others small, many whitewashed, some soft blue.  They have been the typical storage container in Greece for centuries.  And now you can see them at Eye of the Day.

As many other days, this one was made special as we found what we were unaware of seeking, adding a new layer of texture to our already burgeoning selection.

To view an image of one of the old Greek Pithari jars from our collection visit: #/products/planters-and-pots/antiques/old-greek-pithari-1/

There is some mystery… some magic connected with the pottery of Anduze.  At Eye of the Day everyone seems to be drawn to the section of the store holding our great cache of these pots.  The variety of colors, finishes and sizes feeds the eye and the imagination.  The little village of Anduze in the south of France is known as “The Gateway to Cevennes”, but its infinitely more interesting feature is that it is the birthplace and ancestral home of the Anduze Vase.  Apparently, sometime during the 16th century a potter from Anduze spotted some Italian Medici vases at a faire in Beauclaire and was inspired by the beautiful decoration of swags, fruit and flowers and bee-lined back home to the Gateway to the Cevennes and started tinkering.  The vases provided a way in which orange trees could be grown in this area -outdoors in the warm months, then moved indoors in cool weather.  But, I suppose people became lazy and many of the pots were left permanently outside.  THIS, my friends turned out to be great.  The glazes would flake and change color and lo: the unsurpassed antiqued patina that we see on old and new Anduze vases today was created by mother nature.  The shape of the vase is sturdy: short round pedestal, or foot, and thick-rimmed opening, making it difficult to blow over in the Mistrals of southern France.

The French Anduze Vase of today is handmade by one of just a few factories in this small Provencal village.  The swags and “macarons” (badges) are hand applied along with colors and antiquing finishes and, as you have probably already figured out, WE have visited and chosen our vases for Eye of the Day.  Let me relay to you some colors: vert, bleu, jaune, miele, jaspe, ivoire.  There’s a color mix, known in France as Couleurs du Soliel which includes yellow, green, warm brown … you get it.   And funny, there’s one called celadon, but it’s not, it’s faded Tiffany blue, or early morning sky blue, or cloud’s edge blue.  See what I mean about the mystery (or mystere)?

And, oh, the Vin de Pays!