After I got my seedlings watered and outdoors for the day,  we went out for breakfast, and then on to a search for a new planter for the atrium, followed by a trip to our sons' place to check on their vegetable beds, a stop at the grocery store and home to spend the afternoon cooking a lovely roast duck with grape sauce, rice pilaf with mushrooms, onions, raisins and almonds, and some home grown cauliflower with a lemon chervil butter.

The lovely, large planter we bought was only $49. There's no way I could have paid for the clay and glaze materials and fired that pot to cone 10 in a wood kiln for that amount of money. And yet that pot could be shipped from Thailand, and still sell for that retail price. It makes one wonder how cheap the the wholesale price was before the shipping costs.

The past couple of days have been dedicated to shopping for clay and other supplies, plants and other things, transplanting seedlings, planting some annuals, hand watering since some of newly installed watering system is not doing the job, and finally getting software updated and getting my ipad and ipod touch updated. For some reason the process finally worked. Maybe it was the new Windows 7 updates. I can never figure this computer stuff out!

I also spent time ordering some new stains. Some of my latest test were not quite what I wanted; but I got the idea of taking some of the other colors on Mason's site and putting them in my Paint shop pro, and using the part of the program that  will show you what the color would look like lightened. And voila! I saw that some of those stains colors when lightened, look like some of the tones I'm looking for. So I ordered a couple of them and am  I'm hoping that smaller percentage additions just might give me the right colors. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Tomorrow I'll be back in the studio after breakfast and morning plant and animal care.  There are a few more seedlings to transplant and feed and I'm going to risk planting a few tomatoes since we're in a warm spell and I can cover them at night with thick remay.  With my pugmill arriving in another week or so , I'm really hoping to get some of these veggies planted - at least the cucumbers, cabbage and larger tomato plants, that I think will do OK if covered during the cooler evenings. Tender things like basil, eggplant and peppers will probably have to be babied for a couple more weeks.