Thank God it's Friday!

Here's a picture of the Japanese style fountain in front of my studio. Our stone contractor got the bamboo cut and installed a new pump and it's working great. I grew this bamboo at our Florida house and brought it up here. I wish our climate was warm enough to plant this variety of timber bamboo. It's rather spectacular! The rock is from our old house in California. I had a stone mason create a bowl shape which was a lot cheaper than having to buy one of those granite rocks and have it shipped from Japan.

This old body is moving slowly this morning. Yesterday was an almost, all day planting, except for one long phone break talking to Dell about problems with the new laptop, and short meal breaks. The outcome of that phone call is that they're picking up the new Dell XPS laptop today and building me a new one with XP instead of Vista. I was never given the option of operating system, which I should have been, so I don't have to pay a 15% restocking fee, nor shipping costs. The new computer should be arriving around May 10 or therabouts, if there are no parts delivery delays which is what happened with the first order.

We had sourdough pancakes this morning and they were good; but we decided that we actually prefer the buckwheat pancakes. Next time I make sourdough pancakes I'll use whole wheat flour. I now have four sourdough starters going. Two are ready and the other two need one to four more days till they're ready. After that I have two more cultures to start. What was I thinking! I figure I'll eventually get down to the two best tasting ones.

I worked in the garden till 7:40 last night. The weather was incredible and my energy held up long enough to plant 17 perennials, some of which had to be dug up and moved, 15 lettuce plants, a couple of rows of leek and a few parsley plants. I also go a lot of weeding done, enough to fill 3, large, empty compost bags. Needless to say, I was in bed early and slept late. There was no time for the studio, which I knew would be the case; and today may be somewhat of a repeat of yesterday. I want to take advantage of this incredible weather to make a good head start in my planting chores. After today's planting, I'll go back to just an hour or two planting on non rainy days and get on with studio work. I have till the end of this week to throw pots for the next firing, and then it will be time to finish the trimming and start slipping and decorating. I want to get this firing in by the end of the month and it looks doable, even with alloting an hour or two a day for the garden.

This morning I'm planting four rose bushes, 3 hostas and a white bleeding heart. There are 3 planters I'd like to plant as well if time allows. We're doing our regular Friday porch sitting with our friends Jim and Laura tonight, so whether it's gardening or the pottery, I'll have to quit around 4 o'clock so I can get cleaned up, get the house tidied and get the plates ready for the appetizers.

Well, time to pick out two pots for the gallery show for the June, Trac (Toe River Arts Council) artist studio tour. The deadline is tomorrow, but the traffic in Spruce Pine is going to be a mess tomorrow because of a big, in town, craft show, so Jim is going to take the pots in for me this morning.

Till later!
June