Glazing and cooking

Yesterday morning I got this loaf of whole wheat started before I went to the studio. I love this bread machine! This is the most even loaf I've gotten yet, probably because I opened the machine after the last kneading and quickly re-shaped it. I also converted the machines recipes to grams and weighed out the ingredients which gives a much more accurate measurement. The lamb shanks leftovers from Wednesday are tonight's dinner.

Yesterday was a 9 hour glazing and decorating marathon, and if my energy holds, I should be able to finish today. Then I have to get some test batches re-mixed and tiles dipped. Looking at the forecast for the coming week, it looks like Wednesday is going to be a good day to fire.  I'll probably wad and load Monday and take Tuesday to recharge my energy for the firing.

Pizza

Here's last nights pizza. Using the high protein (high gluten) flour, made a really light, lovely crust, better I think than the bread flour I used on other pizzas. I also made the dough a hair wetter than I have before.
By the end of the day I was way too tired to start the sourdough bread; so I decided to shift tonights menu from gumbo to salad and cheese fondue, and I'll probably start my bread tonight.
Yesterdays plan to glaze pots went kaput when my helper didn't arrive, as expected, in the morning. Since I didn't know if she was going to show or not,I decided to taking advantage of the great weather and work on weeding. I also dug up a lot of penstemon, cosmos and calendula volunteers and either transplanted them or got them temporarily into pots to decide later where to put them or share them.
Karen arrived around 12:30 so I had her plant a few packs of purple petunias and continue with the weeding. I took a break around 1:30 to make us all green smoothies for lunch and get my pizza toppings ready, then continued weeding till 5 and then came in to make the pizza and margaritas.
Karen starts a full time job on Monday, managing a new, take and bake pizza place that's opening in Spruce Pine in a couple of weeks, so I'm hoping the weather holds enough so she can get on top of this weeding the rest of the week, because I MUST get back into the studio and finish these pots so I can get the kiln fired some time next week.
Today I'll be mixing Temmoku and Oribe glazes and continue glazing pots. Most of the day will be spent sitting down, painting with glaze, which is a good thing, since I'm quite sore and tired, even after a good nights sleep, from all that garden work.
Before I went to bed I brought a lot of plants into the mudroom and kitchen for the night. We had some frost on the roof this morning, but the plants in the garden don't look like they got any damage. I'm going to keep them in till tomorrow since we're expecting another night in the 30's.
Jim cleaned out the gazebo yesterday, and got all the outdoor furniture back in there - a tiring job. After breakfast this morning he's going to make a Walmart run to fill the car with 12 more bags of mulch for Karen to use today.
With all the garden and studio work we're doing and planning in the next couple of weeks, we should have everything looking pretty good for the TRAC tour the second weekend in June.

Till later,
June

New garden blooms

The rain stopped around dinner time so I was able to take a few pictures of a few of the newly blooming flowers. I started the lupines from seeds last year and this group is spectacular this year - even gifted me with some new babies. The other group I had died over the winter - probably from the fact that they were in an area that was too wet.
As forecast, it went down to 39F last night. To be safe I covered the newly planted peppers and basil with remay and took some of the tender young plants in the mudroom and I'll leave them there tonight since it's going down to 36.
The corn and Corno de toro pepper seeds sprouted so I got those in little seedling packs yesterday; but that was all the gardening for the day. There's just too much studio work to do. Hopefully I can get all the glazing and decorating done in the next two days.
After dinner we watched our Netflix movie "Taken" - a very good, fast moving,well acted, intelligent, movie. After the movie I went back to work for a bit - decorated a few pots and shut the studio down for the night and came in and did more computer cleanup while watching a basketball game with Jim.
This morning I need to feed my sourdough starters and make pizza dough for tonight. I'm going to try the high protein (high gluten) flour this time, which is what I understand is used in New York style pizzas.
Time to cook breakfast.