My phone is now smart

We were out to the farmers market before breakfast for some croissants and veggie starts which I'll be planting later today. It's the only place that I've been able to find these very young lettuce and other veggie seedlings. My early lettuce and cilantro are now pretty kaput and time to pull it out and re-plant. I had to stop at the ATT office after that and got all the information about cellular plans, usage, etc for my Apple 4s smart phone, which our son recently gave me when he upgraded to the latest one.

I opted for the pay as you go unlimited phone and text plan with 1 Gig of data use, to see how this will work for me. This phone will offer us a lot more flexibility than Jim's not very smart phone, which was no use to use the time we got lost on very dark roads and had no way to look at a map. This smart phone also has a handy compass built in. There's a thing called voice memo and a few others goodies that I don't have on my iPod touch. I'll have to check some of these on line and find out just what they do and how to use them.

Since it's too hot to garden here this afternoon, I'll be spending time seeing if my printer can print out the users guide for this smart phone, then cleaning a lot of unused apps in my ipod touch, get it re-synched and hopefully, get some of my photos and apps downloaded on this smart phone. There's a Nike ipad app which looks like you use it to test the merits of your exercise routine. I can definitely get rid of that one. My iPod touch had double the memory, at least, of this new phone, so I have to do a lot unused, rarely used app deleting as well as delete a lot of photos and rarely listened to music.

I actually got four hours in the studio two days ago. Not much got done since it took forever just to re-mix under glazes that had been sitting far too long. I managed to finish decorating a special surprise mug for a friend, which took forever. There were very small numbers that I had to use as part of the decorating and not even the smallest brush worked well, so I had to do a lot of drying, scraping and re-slipping and re-decorating; but I finally got it done.  At the time I regretted that I never bought one of those ceramic black under glaze pencils! I'm just hoping that the slip I had to remove and re-apply to  a bone dry pot, didn't crawl when bisque fired yesterday. I'm almost afraid to look, but I will - later!

Another Dough Fitch and Hannah McAndrew kiln opening

Just love how well they document their work and firing results. Some great pots in this somewhat uneven firing. We all know that one! Better to re-fire the under fired pots than over firing.

Yesterday was a full gardening day for me in two gardens. Today will be easier, as I just have to deal with my own garden and a quick Chinese stir fry dinner.

I've spent the morning organizing some garden fertilizers, sprays, etc, and getting another order in for more organic garden supplies, and finding the recipe for tonight's dinner. It will be a flank steak stir fry using some of my over abundance of snow peas. Time now to get a bit of breakfast and on to my morning garden chores.

Looks like I might just get some studio time after lunch. It's a start. Once these vegetables start coming in in great abundance, I'll be a lot busier in the kitchen. Twenty four or so tomato plants are going to give me a lot of salsa, tomato and taco sauce to process. At least this year I only planted a couple of zucchini plants so I won't have to look around town for open car windows to share. :-)

Very good Nick Joerling video clip

I'm a big fan of Nick's work - just love those animated forms. In this little video clip from his new DVD, he demonstrates how he achieves some of that lovely movement in his work.

Gardening has still been consuming so much of my day. Yesterday my garden day started before breakfast and didn't end till after 9pm. Part of the day was spent traveling back and forth (twice yesterday), to our son and daughter-in-laws place, which is 50 minute round trip.  Today will be a much easier day since I only have to hand water and do feeding only in my garden.

There's a really bad fungus on the tomatoes, beans, cucumbers, peppers and squash in both gardens. In my 50 years of vegetable gardening I've never seen anything like this. I've been pulling off the affected leaves as much as possible and spraying every 7 days with copper solution. Thanks to mercury retrograde the motorized Green Gorilla sprayer just decided to quit and no amount of checking and cleaning got it to work other than by hand pumping and even that has been sporadic. I'm very tired today!

After morning gardening, cooking, feeding my sourdough starter which is long overdue, ordering some vitamins, etc. I'll start on some early dinner prep. I harvested some of the late season lettuce yesterday so tonight I'll be making salad Nicoise for dinner. It's one of our favorite warm weather dinners.

The rest of the day is going to be to rest, and explore Wordpress and see if I can find out some of the more subtle or hidden controls to be able to create a web site I'd be happy with. My first effort proved frustrating. Unlike BlogSpot, they have very few free template choices and their editing choices also seem limited. If it doesn't get any better with more exploration it might be time for me to learn html or just find a host that will support my old Frontpage created web site, or just forget about a web site. I'm retired, so why in the world am I even bothering with this! 

Mug eye candy

Check out this link for 24 very unique mug designs - some pretty awesome, practical and humorous ideas.

http://www.boredpanda.com/creative-cups-mugs/

Yesterday was a re-charge day for me, so other than absolutely necessary garden and cooking chores, I spent time trying in vain, to create a web site on Wix, using one of their templates, which wasn't very open to my efforts to make changes. Instead, I switched over to my blog template and re-worked it to what you're seeing now, which I think makes it more easily readable.

I will continue my search for web software since my Frontpage software is no longer supported by Microsoft or Host Monster, my current web host. Since I have to fairly quickly decide whether or not I will renew that or find another host that supports Frontpage, or find another reasonably priced, user friendly software that Hostmonster or another service will accept. Any suggestions anyone?

Cone 6 soda tests

Now that my ever extended planting of  two gardens is at an end, with only maintenance at hand,  I've been spending time in between hard garden work, cooking and cleaning up picture files in computers and backing up hard drives with only two fishing trips to break up the schedule of the past two months.

Looking at these cone 6 soda tests that were fired in John Britt's little soda test kiln five year ago, is getting me intrigued once again.

Earthenware has not captured my heart, sorry to say. I love the look of it, but I just can't get past the lack of durability or the fact that I still really miss soda firing, Even if it  only means doing a couple of summer and early fall soda firings in my little Olympic soda test kiln, that would  be enough to satisfy that itch. In view of that, it just makes sense to switch to a cone 6 white stoneware or porcelain that I can use for cone 6 oxidation in my larger kiln and the soda in the much smaller gas kiln. 

Of course that means that I have to get back into the studio soon and finish up all those earthenware and cone 10 soda pots. That may take a while since we are determined to enjoy ourselves this summer and get out and about a bit more than we have in the past two years when the focus was just getting settled after the move and seeing to  a lot of work that needed to be done on the house, setting up the studio and creating some semblance of a garden in the midst of all the concrete in the back yard.

Now that garden work is easing up, I should be able to at least get started on wrapping up those earthenware and cone 10 soda pots.

Here's some photos fo some of those Cone 6 soda slip and glaze tests.

CONE 6 SODA TEST TILES:
ABBREVIATIONS FOR CLAY BODIES ON THESE TESTS:

BW - a white stoneware from Axner's.
H - Helios porcelain
LG - Loafers Glory a white stoneware
MW - Moon White stoneware
PH - Phoenix stoneware
P5 - P5 porcelain

GROUP #1 CONE 6 TEST TILES, FROM LEFT TO RIGHT, TOP ROW:

 #5891 Grolleg flashing slip on MW (I think.Tile was broken)
#5891 Grolleg flashing slip on PH
#2993 Bauer flashing sip on BW
#2519 Jane Hamly dark blue slip on BW


2nd row down, from left to right:

#6254 Blair red flashing slip on BW
#6254 Blair's red flashing slip on P5 porcelain
#6031 Tudball black slip on LG
#5898 Hamlyn Green on MW

3rd row down , from left to right:

8407B Tudball Green Rutile cobalt slip on LG
8407  Tudball plain flashing slip on P5 porcelain
8403 Version 5 June Perry flashing slip on LG
6626 Water color on BW


4th row down, from left to right:

#8683 Helmer flashing slip on BW
#8600 June Perry Celadon on PH (not enough reduction but nice satin finish)
#8455 GOES slip on MW
#8407C Tudball rutile slip on LG

 GROUP #2 CONE 6 TEST TILES FROM LEFT TO RIGHT, TOP ROW:

#8941C Show Saver Light blue on LG
#8941B Show Saver leaf green on LG (much nicer color than photo shows)
#8941A Show Saver bright lime green on LG (much nicer color than photo shows)
#8880Version 2 Ruggles and Rankin #6 Tile slip (clay body unknown.Tile broken)

2nd row down,from left to right:

#9166 Linda's Yellow slip on PH
#9166 Linda's Yellow slip on P5
#8996  Randy's flashing slip on PH
#8941D Show Saver on LG (beautiful turquoise green)

3rd row down, from left to right:

#9762 Crackle slip on LG
#9607 #6Tile slip on LG
#9593D June Perry Celadon (nice, fat mutton fat celadon, but under reduced)
#9283 June Perry 1/2 and 1/2 slip on PH



GROUP #3 CONE 6 TEST TILES FROM EFT TO RIGHT, TOP ROW:

#9930 Gay Smith's Helmer flashing slip on LG
#9887 Helmer flashing slip on BW
#9844 Matt Long flashing slip on porcelain? either P5 or Helios (very promising)
#9775 Peachy shino on H (not reduced enough, but surface looks good for cone 6

2nd row from top, from left to right:

#10124 Mark Peter's Helmer flashing slip on PH
#10124 Mark Peter's Helmer flashing slip on LG
#9976 Fish Sauce slip on PH

3rd row from top, from left to right:

#10260 June Perry honey on LG (nice butter surface. May need more reduction.
#10259 June Perry green on LG(very dull. I need to play with this some more)
#10253 Shino on LG (not reduced but surface nice and smooth)
#10251 Temmoku on LG (under fired. I have to check my recipe and recipe sheet and see if there's an error in either one)
 =

Nice decorating idea using resist stamps

This is an interesting use of these sticky stamps. I think this technique would work well with slip in earthenware to resist areas where you want the red clay to show. I'll have to check out commercially available stamps. Might be fun to try it either with available stamps or creating your own.

I'm having a totally vegg out day after 3 busy days of mainly fun and some garden and cooking time. Our son Sean is in town and has taken me on two fishing trips down the Rogue river the past couple of days. It was great fun but I'm now wiped. All day fishing in the sun is great, but also tiring. Fortunately I have enough energy to hand water my plants and cook; but that's going to be about it other than watching the French Open tennis, and email.

We caught a lot of trout and cut throats and I cooked my keeper rainbow trout for dinner Thursday. Yesterday, was another good fishing day, but no fish worth keeping. We didn't catch or even get any salmon bites but a friend on one of the other boats got a really nice one. And they caught enough keeper trout for last nights dinner.

Most of our catch was either native fish which we can't keep or too small to keep, except one which we threw back. My old rock hounder eyes spotted what looked like a light colored agate buried in the river bank somewhere around Trail, and I asked our guide to get up close enough for me to dig it out and it turned out to be a small, split, lovely geode, with an interior, inner layer of blue agate or chalcedony and a hollow center filled with minute crystals - very pretty. I didn't know we had geodes in this part of Oregon.

Sean gave me his iPhone 4, now that he has the latest version. I'll try to play with that a bit today, but after trying unsuccessfully last night to set up the WI-fi, I'm thinking that I need to get to an ATT office and buy some minutes for the times I'll use it for on line access when WI-fi isn't available, incoming calls, etc.. This is all new to me since the only iphones we've ever had are the non smart type Trac phones where you just buy minutes as you need. Jim has enough trouble trouble figuring out that simple one (there's were a couple of days of incessant grumbling noises emitting from his office when he got that phone). This smart phone looks a lot like my ipod touch, so I should have no trouble figuring it out once I get it set up - I hope! LOL

Right now it's time to head for the kitchen and make our Sunday bagels with smoked salmon and Neuchatel cheese breakfast. Hopefully, this brain food will help me to understand these iPhone instructions.

Nice Jake Allee video on making a darted textured pitcher

Lots going on with this pitcher and Jake shares his technique and his design choices. And I thought I was the only one who found that inside old ball point pens are hidden wonderful pottery tools! LOL

Jim is off getting the car serviced and I'm house bound waiting for our sons wine delivery, writing checks and other paper work. I got most of my hand watering done before breakfast but I'm in the house till the wine arrives or Jim gets back. Then I'll be going out to plant, since there was no time for it yesterday.

This afternoon will be for planting, since yesterday was a day to get Bodhi to the vets early for a day of teeth cleaning, shots, blood work, etc, breakfast out, then on to Ashland for a bit of play time which only amounted to peeking into 3 shops (the Tibetan Buddhist shop was the best!), and a big food shopping binge at the Market of Choice and Shop n' Kart which is the only place around selling great cheese blintzes. Guess what we just had for breakfast? :-) I got a few great cheeses - really splurged. But our daughter gave me a list of the 5 great cheeses you have to try before you die. So I'm going to indulge. They're ordering a couple on the list and we'll get back there Friday to pick them. One tiny piece of cheese was as much of one of Jim's bottle of wines! It's better be good; but I reminded Jim that the same volume of good caviar is even more expensive than that tiny piece of cheese. I sure hope it's worth it! I'll be trying it as soon as the pear ripen.

Then we drove to our sons place on the river and I did a bit of hand watering and weeding there, and then back to the vets to pick up Bodhi. Too bad he can't smile, because his teeth are glemingly white! Then we headed home to unpack all those groceries, make dinner, cover a few tender plants for the night,  and retreat to the bedroom for rest, email and some Yard Crasher TV and blessed sleep.

Time to write the last membership check. Our daughter says I need to slow down, so this is part of my slow down time.:-)

Dave and Bonnie Deal Raku

If the embedding didn't work, here's the link:

http://media.opb.org/clips/2932-potters_dave_and_boni_deal

Enjoy the exquisite Raku pots that this Pacific North West couple produce.
I would definitely not recommend his no tongs, hands only, pot removal technique for the uninitiated. 

As for me, I'm a day late finishing planting the last 3 perennials; and it's too hot now to do it; but at least I did find time to cast a few the past few days and enjoyed a lot of great time with the family at the river house. We even saw an adult bald eagle flying by the river in the late afternoon.

There was morning garden time today to hand water, dead head and pick some lettuce and snow peas for tonight's salad. After 3 days of rich, delicious party food and great wines at our son and daughter-in-laws ranch the past 3 days, we're ready for a salad and a simple grape tomato pasta dish tonight. 

Jim is off to the store for the grape tomatoes. There are small, green cherry tomatoes on a couple of my plants so it won't be long before we'll be eating our own. 

My garden charts/calendars need updating, and there's a few other things I need to attend to now while I watch some of the French Open tennis that I taped. Hopefully after dinner, it will be a bit cooler and if I have the energy to get out there, I'll plant one or two of those perennials and/or install the last plant hanger for the cascading tomato plant. Problem is that lately, by the time dinner is done, I'm too wiped to do anything more physical than typing and using the TV remote!

Dreaming of mojitos

Feel like I've been in a sauna all day! It was still hot out there at 7pm! The forecast was for high 80's but I think it wound up well over 90 today. At 8:20 pm it's 88!

I finally found some okra starts at the farmers market along with a few more goodies  to eat and plant. There were a lot of interesting vendors there, even one man sharpening knives. There was only one potter selling mugs and sponge holders, many ethnic food vendors, several artisan bread bakers. various honeys, home made jams, soaps and too many other goodies to list. 

Some growers had plant varieties that none of the local nurseries carry - things like borage which I bough, and other more unusual herbs and veggies. I bought a really nice coreopsis which is a different variety than I've seen anywhere else. I bought that, as well as a luscious, purple penstemon which the hummingbirds are going to love. I was like a kid in a candy store! Good thing I've run out of space to plant for the most part or I would have filled the car.

They had organically grown starts for most of the heirloom and other tomatoes as well as many of the other veggies that I started myself, so next year I think that I will buy most of them at the market and only grow the two tomato varieties that nobody sells One vendor was selling morels and other wild mushrooms but I didn't think they'd go with the crab cakes I was making again for tonight's dinner. I don't know if the morels will be around next week, but I will splurge if they are and make sure the dinner I plan that night would be perfect for some  morels sauteed in butter with minced shallots and a bit of pale dry sherry.

After one last stop at Fred Meyers for a low planter for the outdoor coffee table, and more potting soil, we headed, unpacked the car, and had the lovely croissants I bought at the farmers market. Then we drove to our sons place where I pulled out some old, going to seed lettuce and planted one of the okra plants,  pruned a few tomatoes, did a little weeding and a bit of hand watering.  The fishing pole still has not gotten out of the car - but it will soon, I hope.  I was too tired and too wilted from the heat and just wanted to get back into an air conditioned car.

After stop at the grocery store for some corn on the cob for dinner and a few more groceries, it was time to go home and stay put for the rest of the day.

After dinner I got the last three planters of annuals planted and hit the shower. Tomorrow is another day, and I'm planning on a  very early start planting these last 6 perennials. I'd also like to get two hangers installed on the fence for the Hummingbird feeder and a cascading, cherry tomato which I potted tonight. Then I can finally look forward to some summer fun in the pool and some happy hour, poolside mojitos and margaritas this summer. The mint is on hand, and I bought some limes today, so Mojitos will be part of poolside happy hour early next week. Oh yeah!

A visit to the studio of Grayson Perry

I'll bet that he knows where everything is amid all that clutter!

After a few days of needed rest, helped by mother nature's blessed rain, I'm ready to get back to  the last of the planting.. This body is still feeling the effects of over work, signaled by a scratchy throat, swollen glands and general exhaustion the past couple of days  I'm not going to go at it with such fervor this week. There's very little more to plant, just leeks at our son and daughter-in-laws garden and a few leeks, two perennials and a some bedding plants here. And I will do it in small doses over a couple of mornings, leaving the bulk of the afternoon free for grocery shopping, cooking and maybe even some studio time.

Yesterday was spent on paper  work, a meeting about the drip system and new timer installation, which still needs some work,computer clean up and spending a couple of hours making some slab and impression templates to play with when the planting is done and I can get back in the studio.

Today I'll be doing some hand watering here, planting,  feeding, some hand watering and weeding at our son's place, and walking down to the river to cast few afterwards, if I'm not too tired, and making a crab cake dinner. It should be a good day!

It is done

 It is done! Every inch of plating space is planted at our son and daughter-in-laws place, and waiting for nature to now, do her job. For me,  it will be time to just feed, weed, water as needed and critter check every other day or so.

My fishing pole never left the back of the car yesterday. With rain in the forecast for today, I decided to finish their garden. I was determined to be done with all or at least 99% of my spring planting in both gardens by the end of this week.

Today's rain puts off finishing my own little bit of planting. Yesterday morning I re-potted all the orphan tomatoes here before heading to our sons place. It was a perfect day yesterday and I pushed myself to the max; but felt so good to finally have every inch of that vegetable garden planted. I even had a couple of leek seedlings to bring home since there wasn't a spot left, that I could find to plant one more thing!

As soon as the rain ends, tomorrow or the next day,  I'll plant my few leeks and a couple of fill in bedding flowers and my garden will be done other than waiting to see if one of those orphan tomatoes winds up being an Opalka tomato. If it is I will probably just plant it in a pot and give the rest of those orphan seedlings away.

Other than cooking, today is going to be a day of rest. There's one more clay court tennis final to watch and a paper pile to deal with. My garden notes and feeding chart were completed last night, so I can dig into my paper pile and make a dinner and shopping list for the week. It's roast chicken dinner tonight - perfect for this rainy day.

Jim said this years gardening made him think of the Pope who kept asking Michelangelo, "when will it (the painting on the Sistine chapel), be done.  My answer is, "It is done, well, almost!". Blame it on the rain.

A extruding project video

Found this video while perusing Pinterest this morning. I don't see any reason why someone couldn't just make square slab and do the same project,. This spiral  shape could be used to make small boxes, smaller jars, bud or larger vases, lotion dispensers, cruets, etc.

Still can't find any okra starts after visiting a couple of nurseries the past couple of days. I have some okra seeds, so I'll get them soaking and plant them in both gardens tomorrow, along with some nasturtium starts that I bought yesterday.. They're good to plant near, but not too near, squash plants since some insects which attack the squash prefer the nasturtiums. Plus, the nasturtium flowers are edible and the leaves may be as well. I'd have to double check that..  It looks like I will be finished with the bulk of planting as I hoped, by the end of this week.

It was over 90 F yesterday, so I quit after about an hour and a half of garden work at our son's place. I'll have to finish over there tomorrow. Since it's going to be even hotter today (an expected high of 95F), I'll start some planting in my garden right after an earlier, than usual breakfast. This just may be the day I get in our pool. It's been over 2 years since we've been here and I've yet to go in the pool or the spa. That's quite a shift from my youth, when it was hard to get me to come out of the water. I never understood those girls sitting by a pool tanning themselves when they could have been doing an imitation of Esther Williams doing water ballet or being brave enough to dive off the high board. Such fun memories, except the time I was either courageous enough or foolish  enough to attempt a back dive off the high board and let's just say, I had an unsuccessful, painful landing on my back.. Guess that's another reason to call it a back dive!

Interesting Ukrainian slip decorating video

I don't speak Ukranian, but a picture is worth 1,000 words, so enjoy and if anyone understands Ukrainian, maybe you can tell us what he's saying!

This morning it was planting time at our son and daughter-in-laws garden. With the exception of one tiny spot, all 6 of their raised beds are now planted. I will have to get back there tomorrow to replant a few bush beans since some hungry birds have decapitated a quite a few of these newly sprouted beans.

Today I set up a couple of cucumber lean to's and planted  a couple of mounds of cucumbers, as well as some chili peppers, basil and a couple of eggplants. I ran out of mushroom compost, otherwise I would have planted a few other things in the flat area of their garden Weeding and watering topped off the garden work there.

I had to stop on the way home to get another bag of mushroom compost and pick up a couple of food items.
 Once home, car unpacked, I crashed in the bedroom, turned on the TV and fell asleep watching some clay court tennis from Russia. Now it's time to think about tonight's dinner. 

Last night I made a delicious, old fashioned meat loaf, with a new recipe I put together  after reading a whole bunch of classic ones on line, and loosely remembering my mothers meat loaf. It turned out very well and will now be my new "go to" meatloaf recipe. The nice part is that there's enough leftover for dinner again tomorrow night.  Tonight's dinner is bratwurst, boiled, buttered parsley potatoes, corn and applesauce. After a heavy duty gardening and shopping time, I'm opting for this easy, no fuss dinner tonight.

If anyone wants to look at my meat loaf recipe, you can find the link to my other blog in my blog list on the right of this blog page.

Our in the car lunch of pistachios and a tangerines on the way home, doesn't make for a filling, meal,  so I'd better post this blog and get my achy tired self into the kitchen and start cooking some meat and potatoes.

Nice slip decorating technique video

I like this idea of trailing the base slip while the wheel is rotating. It seems to give a nice, even coverage and less messy than having to pour it later on. Fun technique.

Enjoying a very lazy Mother's day morning. Jim says he's going to be serving me a bagel, cream cheese and smoked salmon breakfast in bed, so I'm sitting here watching a Sharapova/Halep  Madrid Open clay court tennis final while doing email and looking forward to a bit more of this lazy time before I have to go get out of this cozy, warm bed, hit the shower and get outside and uncover all my tender veggies.

This is the last night that I'll have to cover the tenderest veggies and basil,  and am looking forward to seeing my garden without all of the remay shrouds.

Since we celebrated Mothers day with an early Mothers day dinner two nights ago, I'll be cooking a Sunday, comfort meal tonight - meat loaf, mashed potatoes and buttered ginger carrots.There's nothing like mashed potatoes to touch a mans heart, well almost!

Here's a nice little video showing how you can use some of these antique wood stamps to create your own plaster stamps.

While doing a bit of organizing in the studio earlier, I took a photo of my own collection of these antique stamps. The square ones are my favorites and they're the hardest to find. You can find a lot of them on ebay and probably Etsy as well. Years ago, when I bought so many of these, you could find them in a lot of antique shops and may still be able to do that. Some stores that sell Indian gifts would also be a good place to search these out.

It took two days of working between intermittent showers but I finally got all my planters planted and fed. Jim celebrated Mothers day early by bringing me flowers and taking me to my favorite restaurant in the valley - Sammy's Cowboy bistro, last night. The name does not match the great food this lady chef cooks. They have their own gardens where they grow a lot of their own vegetables and flowers. She is to my mind, the most creative chef here in the valley.

I picked our first snow peas two day agos which I'll use tonight in tonight's yaki soba noodle stir fry dinner  . Most of my raised beds are planted except for one square. I've got a bunch of "no name" tomatoes which are too small to identify, so I'm holding off on planting that square. Our son and daughter-in-laws garden is well planted, except for the cold tender things which I'll plant Tuesday. Right now all those tender herbs and veggies are covered for the next cold evenings.

By mid or late week, I'll be done planting at my son and daughter-in-laws garden. Warmer days and more importantly, warmer nights are coming which will allow me to finish all this planting and get most of the remay put away till next spring.

I spent time during the rainy spells to cut out red plastic squares to put at the base of the tomato plants and I got those installed on all my tomatoes and have enough cut out for our sons garden. It's said that putting this red plastic down increases the tomato yield by 20%. Hope it's true. You can never have enough vine ripened tomatoes!

Another gardening day and outrageously delicious Gorgonzola wine cream sauce recipe for pasta.

 Got a lot of gardening time in my back yard yesterday and all the planters are now filled and planted. I'm still having to cover a lot of things at night because of the cool evenings. The plants are doing well with all this extra care.

Planting here and a trip to the store to exchange a pot for a larger one and cooking used up all my time and energy and I never made it to my son and daughter-in-laws garden, so I'll be going over there today for some planting and other garden chores.

After another heavy gardening day,  it's going to be an easy dinner of salad, Italian sausage and spinach fettucine with the leftover Gorgonzola sauce and Italian ices for dessert.

There's a 70% chance of rain in the forecast for tomorrow, so I might actually get into the studio for a while.

One of my readers requested this Gorgonzola sauce that I mentioned in yesterdays blog. If you didn't read the blog, Jim said it was the best pasta dish he's ever had. It really was that good!

•  
•  GORGONZOLA CREAM SAUCE - SERVE 6 AS A SAUCE AS AN ENTREE 
•  
• (I halved this for the two of us and had enough sauce leftover to use as a pasta side dish tonight with a mild or medium Italian sausage).
•  
• 2 cups heavy cream
• ½ cup dry white wine (I used Chardonnay)
• ½ cup chicken stock
• 4 oz Gorgonzola Dolce (must use this. It's much creamier than regular Gorgonzola. I buy mine on line from Murrays cheese in New York, but it you might have a good sour near by)
• 2 Tbs  freshly grated Parmesan Reggiano cheese,  
• Optional: extra Parmesan to pass  around.

        finely chopped or snipped flat leaf parsley as a garnish.

        Slice or finely dice the Gorgonzola cheese and set aside.

• In a large sauté pan, heat the cream, wine and stock over medium-high heat until it starts to bubble. Lower heat and simmer gently for 15 to 20 minutes or until the liquid has reduced by about one third or lightly coats a metal spoon.
•  
• ** If you baby this by keeping the heat a bit higher than a simmer it will be ready in about half the time. I used a high heat rubber spatula to stir it very often, till it lightly coated a metal spoon.


• Add the Gorgonzola and Parmesan and stir until the Gorgonzola has melted and the cheeses are fully blended. Adjust consistency with additional cream if necessary.


• Season to taste with Kosher salt, freshly ground black pepper and a pinch of grated nutmeg.  (only use enough nutmeg until you can taste just a hint of it. For me that may have been something like 8-18 grates on a nutmeg grater).Serve right away.

NOTE: You can serve this with mushroom or other ravioli, or rigatoni, penne, ziti, spinach fettucine works if you use it as a side dish with fish or simple grilled chicken, or pork. An added 1/4 of a cup of chopped walnuts would be a nice addition to the mushroom or squash ravioli dish. If serving this sauce with one of the tube pastas, some halved, grilled, cherry tomatoes would make a lovely addition. 

I used fresh mushroom ravioli that I bought at Costco. It was very good. The sauce takes about twenty minutes to cook and the fresh ravioli about 3 minutes.  A salad first made for a complete and lovely dinner.

Hannah McAndrew and Doug Fitch kiln unloading

Here's another video thanks to Dough Fitch and Hannah McAndrew, unloading their wonderful, wood fired, slip ware.

If you interested in my garden and kitchen efforts of today, feel free to read on. 

We set out after breakfast for some more planters, and new mouse for  my computer. I got the new planters prepped, filled with potting soil and set in place.. I bought a bird bath and got that set up as well. The back yard is going to look great once we get a few weeks of warm nights so these annuals can take off.

A pot I bought for my little gardenia was too small, so  I'll be back at the store tomorrow to return it and get a larger one. Tomorrow I'll get them planted along with a  few bedding plants in the front yard. 

I'm waiting for this spell of cool evenings to give way to warmer nights next week and then I can plant the rest of these tender plants - some here, and most at our son and daughter-in-laws garden. They have 9 raised beds and I only have enough extra remay for two of  them.

Before dinner I covered all the tender veggies with  old studio towels and  heavy duty remay. After all the days garden chores, I managed to bounce back after a short break and make dinner - salad with greens from our garden and mushroom ravioli with an amazing gorgonzola dolce, cream and wine sauce. Jim said it was the best pasta dish he's ever had - definitely a keeper recipe . And of course he brought out a lovely Italian wine to offset all the cholesterol in that amazing sauce!

Tomorrow I'll get the rest of those  new planters planted  and maybe head over to my daughter-in-laws garden. I want to set up a cucumber trellis and build a couple of mounds for summer and winter squash over there.  It's been a real juggling act planting two gardens with this crazy weather, but I think I'm managing it pretty well, so far.

Tonight, I promised Jim and myself that I'm done with adding new planters this year.  I would have been in the studio this week, but I just couldn't resist buying those star jasmines and a few more annuals and perennials, which then necessitated a three or four day search for the right shape, color and sized pots for those jasmine.. And so goes my garden passion this time of year. The clay is beckoning, in fact, nagging at me lately, so  it won't be long before I'll be covered in it instead of all this compost and potting soil.

Winding down after a few days of family visiting.

The house is pretty quiet. After we all went out for breakfast, our daughter and son-in-law continued on to Seattle. They'll  be flying back home to Munich, Germany tomorrow.  It was a great visit as always. They flew here after their busy and fun filled Florida vacation and were ready to mainly vegg out, after doing a bit of shopping. Erin shops for food items she can't get in Germany and there are always visits for TJ Max, Ross for Less and one or two other places for jeans other goodies that are a bargain here compared to European prices.

I stopped at the nursery on the way home for a couple more annuals and some ferns to replace those that died over the winter There were no fern replacements in stock but I did get a few annuals to put in those fern pots and got those planted as soon as we got home. There's nothing sadder for a gardener, than looking at a pot or a garden with plants that didn't make it through the winter. At least now there's some color in those pots until I can find those fern replacements.

 I also bought a Star Jasmine and it smells so good, I want to go back tomorrow and get another one and maybe I can train them up the posts of the pergola. They also had a red penstemon which I also bought. The hummingbirds love that plant, and now I have to find a place for it!

 Jim and I spent the rest of day of getting the house back in order. After several days of rich eating, margaritas and lot of  very good wines, we switched gears tonight and just had pea soup and tuna salad sandwiches for dinner. It was perfect for this cool, damp and rainy day. We did indulge in some dark chocolate covered cherries for dessert, though.

It's going down to 35F tonight, so after dinner I once again took several flats of tender seedlings back indoors for the night and doubled up on the remay covering on my raised vegetable beds. By mid week they're forecasting an 88 and 90F day. The poor plants are having to deal with the thirty and forty degree rising and falling temperatures, as well as some hail the other day.

This weather of ours is nothing compared to the tornadoes and storms occurring right now in the east. Time to up prayers for all in harms way. It looks very bad.

Another lovely video of Hannah McAndrew and Doug Fitch at work

  
Got to spend a few minutes catching up with some blogs tonight and was happy to see a couple of new posts and videos from Hannah  McAndrew and Doug Fitch. Since I don't have any time or energy for the studio right now, I was happy to see that other people are busy in their studios making wonderful work.

As for me, it's been and continues to be time for family, planting and taking care of two gardens and spending a lot of other time in the kitchen these days.

Our son and family were here over Easter and our daughter and son-in-law, who live in Germany, arrive tomorrow, so today was for finishing up some planters and doing some tidying in the back yard.  It was cold and wet and wasn't a fun job; and of course the sun only came out after I called it a day. Since I had to get the guest room ready and clean up my office which has been subbing as a plant nursery, the rest of the back yard tidying will have to wait till late tomorrow morning when it warms up a bit. 

Even with this seesaw, hot then cold weather, both gardens are doing well. I was surprised yesterday to see that there's a ripe strawberry to pick; but I'm saving that first one for our daughter. Erin There are flowers on some of my pepper plants that I've been bringing out every morning and bringing in at night. Potato plants are over a foot high in my raised beds and not far behind at our sons place;and we've been harvesting lettuce and asparagus for about six weeks now.  I'm hoping that by next week the night time temperatures will be high enough,that with the remay covers at the ready, I'll be able to plant some of these more tender veggies in both gardens. I'm getting a bit tired of bringing these tender veggie and herb plants in and out twice a day; but they are certainly doing well with all this attention.

Linda Arbuckle show at Akar design

http://akardesign.com/shows/index.asp

Looks like there are only 3 of Linda Arbuckle's pots still available. Lovely work as always!

As for me, it's still all gardening and cooking and computer time with emails, and other household chores.. Yesterday we headed for the garden center and I came home with 3 trays of annual flowers and veggie starts. After unloading the car I got some more things planted and watered, prepped and filled a new planter, fed all the containers in the front of the house and atrium, some in the back yard and trimmed the last couple of damaged perennials. By then, it was time for dinner prep.

Since I'm still a bit on an Italian kick,  for dinner, I made chicken Francaise and asparagus grilled after being tossed with a tiny bit of olive oil and good quality  balsamic vinegar. Jim isn't much on lemony tastes except in margaritas! :-) So, I cut the amount of lemon in half and he loved the recipe.

This morning, after breakfast, I moved the pepper and eggplant starters outdoors for the day and got the last earth box into place, so all the planters are now where they will be permanently living and I'm waiting for my helper to arrive who will be checking  the whole drip system and adding a few more for the new planters. He'll also turn on the automatic watering which is going to save me a lot of time every day.

The tomato plants were left out overnight and all seemed to fare well. The people at the garden center told me they don't cover any of the veggie seedlings this time of year unless temperatures go down to 36F, so it looks like we're OK for at least the next ten days.

While James, our garden helper is working on the drip system, I'll be fertilizing and transplanting a lot of these veggies. Things are looking really good now, and it looks like I just might reach my goal of having all my transplanting finished here by the beginning of next week, other than peppers, eggplant and basil which prefer night time temperatures no lower than about 50F.  They would survive if I planted them now, but experience has shown me that it slows down their growth if planted when night time temperatures are below 50 or close to it.

 Next week, I'll focus on my son and daughter-in-laws vegetable garden. I have  lot of veggies to transplant there as well as hand watering to do every other day, since they haven't had the people in to set up the automatic watering for the season and  may not have that done for another week or more.

Keeping in the Italian mode, I promised Jim stuffed clams for dinner tonight, so I'd better start on those transplants now, so I can get to the store right after lunch for the clams.  Ciao for now!

Pedulum glazing

Pendulum glazing - very inventive, fun technique.

Today was a gardening marathon - first at our son and daughter-in-laws garden, turning over and amending part of a raised bed  to plant kale and cauliflower, pulling some weeds and doing hand watering, and then the rest of the day in our back yard.

I'm exhausted and sore, but most of my flower pots, other than those in the shade are cleaned out and planted except for a few more annuals I need to get for them. I'm off tomorrow to buy a couple of more planters, more veggie starts and hopefully some annuals for shade. If they have all the annuals in stock, I should be finished with all my early planting at our house by the end of the week. There will still be some cold sensitive veggies and herbs like  basil, peppers, eggplant and tomatoes to plant; but evenings have to get a wee bit warmer before I plant those. We're in a very warm spell right now but in few days temperatures will be down to the low 60's during the day and high 30's low 40's at night. The weather this year has certainly been a challenge at times. It's definitely been keeping us on our toes.

Well, that's it for today. The tomato plants are in for the night and so am I.

Great free art book resource.

 Here's a link to a great resource of hundreds of free art books courtesy of the Getty Museum. You can read on line or download the pdf files.

http://www.getty.edu/publications/virtuallibrary/index.html

These days our garden, our son and daughter -in-laws garden and our  kitchen are the three spaces where one can find me, other than these times on the computer or browsing cookbooks. Our local county library system, I have discovered, has some great cookbooks and I've been availing myself of those. Unfortunately, most that I ordered arrived at once, so I've been in cookbook heaven all week. I think I'm suffering from writers cramp from all the recipes I've written down on index cards.

Since I'm anticipating a good crop of tomatoes, most of the cookbooks are Italian and a couple just for pasta. I've made my own pasta before, using my pasta hand roller, but never rolling by hand and there are some great videos on you tube demonstrating the technique. Now I have to order one of those long, wooden, pasta rolling pins and give a it a go some time this summer. I wonder if anyone has ever rolled out pasta on a slab roller? HMMMM??

This morning we're heading out for breakfast, then driving to our sons place to hand water and retrieve the asparagus I harvested, and left behind yesterday, then back home to clean out some planters and  plant the annuals that I bought yesterday. After today, I'll have half the containers in the back planted.

Our daughter and son-in-law will be here in a couple of weeks and I want to have all my planting finished before then. My seedlings are watered and now it's time to check the weather and see if it's warm enough to put the tray of tomato starts out for the day. As you can tell, there just hasn't been time nor energy for the studio right now.

Mesmerizing, is the best word to describe this visual delight, thanks to Russian potter Mikhael Sadovnikov.

As for me, it's the usual morning of email, animal and husband feeding, seedling care and other chores. While out to dinner with our son and his family last night I lost one of the lenses in my prescription glasses, so I'll be off to Costco after lunch to make an appointment for an eye exam so I can order new reading glasses. These are two years old so it's probably time for new ones.. Then we're off to the lawyers to sign some papers. So, it doesn't look like there will be any time for the studio.

Yesterday I did get into the studio just long enough to put a few things away and decorate a small test cup. I spent more time having to laboriously mix up and sieve a couple of under glazes that were a lumpy mess after sitting for a while.Some company must make a mini hand blender that would fit in those small Amoco under glaze containers. In fact, come to think of it, I used to have one like that, so I'll have to dig around the studio and see if I still have it tucked away somewhere. It felt good to finally be back in there even for just a short while.

There are only two no rain days in the current ten day weather forecast, so it looks like I may be getting a lot more studio time after today. It's about time.

NCECA Photos

After bemoaning the lack of NCECA feedback and photos early yesterday, a couple of more digest emails arrived from Clayart with a few more members sharing their experiences; and I found the above slide show video on you tube this morning. I have two suggestions to make before watching it. Turn off the sound. It was as irritating to these ancient ears as the sound of fingernails running down a blackboard.

The video is a rapid fire slide show, so my other suggestion would be to keep your mouse arrow pointed to the pause button the whole time, so you can stop it and get a better look at the work. There is a very generous amount of photos on this video and to really appreciate the work, you may want to use the pause buttom periodically.

We are on day two of a week of rain in the forecast, so my gardening will probably be confined to indoors. Today is the last day with the family before they head back to California tomorrow morning.  We're all getting together again for dinner so I have a good part of the day at home before we head out for dinner.

With all the rain in the forecast,  it looks like I may get in studio time in between seedling care, cooking, computer and other chores this week. Being optimistic, I turned the studio heat on a few minutes ago and it should be warm enough after breakfast to get in there and make a decision as to where to start again, after I  put away some recently purchased clay and other items. There's a small group of bone dry pots waiting for some sgraffito work and that's the most likely place to start. It's a good sit down job that my aching, arthritic hip will appreciate in this cool, damp weather.

Nceca musings of the day

Read my Clayart digest this morning and it seems that there is so little information being shared on peoples experience at NCECA this year. Only two attendees had anything to say and that was only after someone remarked about the absence of information and asked for some members to please share their experiences. Even then, only two people in this group with over 3,000 members, replied.

In years past there was an abundance of shared photos on Flicker, as well as video clips and enthusiastic run downs of peoples NCECA experience; but this year seems to be a very different story.

With increased costs of the event, travel, hotel accommodations and costs of eating out, attendance was way down. Even sellers cut back on the number of booths. Someone mentioned that many schools are no longer funding their instructors attendance at these events. If that trend continues it doesn't bode well for the future.

In my 40 or so years in clay I've never attended NCECA, mainly because it's my time of year to tend to my seedlings and do spring garden work; and the cost and time away from home, family, studio, just never seemed to make attendance a priority; but I have to admit that I always enjoyed feedback from the returning attendees who were always so generous in sharing their experiences.

Maybe some news and photos may be forthcoming in a couple of days. It will be interesting to see what if any changes those in charge of NCECA may institute in the next few years. Perhaps they could start streaming some of the lectures, and demos for a fee. Now that is something I would be happy to pay for an watch at home.

After rain all morning, the sun has now appeared; and thunder storms with possible hail are forecast for this afternoon. My gardening chores were indoors this morning, other than moving a lot of leek seedlings outdoors, bringing other trays of more vulnerable vegetable seedlings back indoors and making a couple of trips to my outdoor potting bench to get some potting soil so I could transplant a bunch of tomato and pepper seedlings.

It's an early, wood fired pizza night at the Perry Horseshoe Falls Ranch tonight, with our son manning the pizza oven, so I get another night out of kitchen duty. With the bad weather coming in, Jim and I may eat and run, since sitting under an out door pavilion in 50 degree weather, in the middle of  wind and thunderstorms may not be the best thing for this body, which is just getting over an upper respiratory infection. I will bring my appetite and a heavy, hooded jacket and keep my fingers crossed for better weather than is forecast.

Lovely video of Dough Fitch and Hannah McAndrew slip decorating

They do make it look sooooo easy! Love them and their work. Both have such lovely energy!

As for me, family is in town - son and eldest grandson arrived with the new puppy last night and daughter-in-law and the twins arrive later today, so the next several days will be just for gardening and family.

Next week, starting Tuesday some cool, rainy weather is arriving, so, other than indoor seedling care, I'll get time away from gardening for a few days and maybe even see if I can my way back into the studio. No promises, just hoping that my chest wheezing will stop before the rains come.

Meantime, I'm going to enjoy this sunny day and get some planting done this afternoon.

Done Reitz video

This three year old video of Don Reitz, who just passed away, shows him working on a triptych. I just love the spontaneous decorating - spontaneous, yet still with the ability to make those right choices almost instantly.

As for me, still waiting for my bronchia to clear of this upper respiratory crud before even looking at clay. Meantime the seedling care, planting, cooking, and lots of reading are keeping me out of trouble.

This morning after during the usual seedling watering, I planted a bunch more leek seedlings that had sprouted. Not sure what the rest of the day will bring since the weather has gotten a bit cooler. I covered my other raised bed with remay last night since the first potatoes have come up and we were due for temperatures in the high twenties. It's a real juggling act with the vegetable gardening this time of years. Some seedlings are taken out for the day and brought in at night; and other are still doing well under grow lights in the house.

I may just drive over to our sons place and transplant a few more things in their vegetable garden. First I have to check the weather report to make sure it's not going down to freezing again. My supply of remay is down to the last sheet, so I can cover whatever I plant if a freeze is in the forecast. I just need to feel perky enough by mid afternoon, when the temperature is as high as it will get for the day, to get over there and plant. Yesterday at that time I nodded off and didn't wake up till 6 o'clock. Guess the universe decided I needed that more than planting time.

Time now to think about breakfast. It's corned beef hash this morning.

Sad news

 

Just heard that Don Reitz has passed away.  We have lost some of our best potters and teachers this past year. So sad.

Here's another photo of him and his work:

Top of the morning to you all on this St. Patrick's day

After doing some 6am work in the plant nursery, transplanting some seedlings, I pulled out my corned beef and cabbage recipe for tonight's traditional St. Patrick's day dinner, while watching "The Quiet Man" with John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara. It's the one time a year I can get Jim to eat cooked cabbage!

It rained overnight and more is due this morning; but I'm hoping there will be a respite at some point, because temperatures are due to go a hair below freezing so I need to get out and cover some of my tender veggies and then drive over to our son and daughter-in-in laws place and do the same in their vegetable garden.

It doesn't look like it will be a day for outdoor planting. This is the first day of the moon cycle for planting root vegetables again, but that can wait a couple of days till we're past this cold spell.

Time to get dressed and look for something appropriate for this "wearing of the green" day. In the meantime,

“May the road rise up to meet you
May the wind be always at your back
May the sun shine warm upon your face
And the rain fall soft upon your fields
And until we meet again
May God hold you in the palm of his hand”

An Irish Blessing.

It's all about gardening these days

Been feeling a little bit better the past couple of days, with this virus/upper respiratory thing starting to break up, so I've been able to get in some more planting and other garden work at our son and daughter-in-laws place as well as ours. I over did it a few weeks ago which brought this virus thing back, so now I'm pacing myself a little more wisely.

Today has been one incredible day - calm sunny and in the 70's. All the outdoor furniture is in place, and the decking around the pool is pretty clean for the moment, but will be getting messy again once I start doing a more extensive cleanup in all the containers; but that job will have to wait a few days till we get past the cold and rainy spell arriving tonight.

I've been picking asparagus for over a week, the first beets have come up and most early plants are looking very good except my one cauliflower which looks like it's been discovered by slugs or some other leaf chewer.  I protected all cucurbits from early moths, using remay and didn't think those high raised beds would have slug or other similar critters in residence. I may have to go out there tonight with a flashlight and see if I can find the guilty party and send him to another dimension, or at least to another neighborhood.

 I also filled another new window box sized planter and planted cilantro, dill  and a few other things, hand watered and transplanted a couple of seedlings in the house nursery. There's more of those to do but it will be raining in the morning so my gardening will be indoors unless it clears. A cold spell is arriving tomorrow night with below freezing temperatures so I'll be out there covering some things in both gardens; but all in all I feel that even with losing so much time with a viral thing the past six weeks or so I have really gotten a good start on this years vegetable gardening.

All the lovely flowering cherry trees, forsythia, Bradford pears and daffodils are blooming in the valley. I do so love this time of year here in the Southern Oregon. Now that I've cleaned up, it's time for a margarita and some Mexican food.

Sunday morning cup eye candy

http://artceteragallery.blogspot.com/p/cups-ii.html

Some nice work to enjoy at Artcetera gallery cup show.

Another rainy morning, so transplanting may be out for today. Made another trip to the garden center for more compost and potting soil yesterday and the plan was to do some transplanting when I got home; but after unpacking some groceries and unloading those heavy bags and newly purchased plants, and checking the beds,etc.etc.,  it was time for a break before starting some early dinner prep. After dinner it was time to update my garden notes, do my last seedling check and watering, and vegg out for the night with PBS and some Ric Steves and Doc Martin shows.

These days all my time and energy is going to planting two gardens, seedling care and cooking, which is not a bad thing and pretty much typical for me for this time of year.

After breakfast I'll get these cold weather seedlings out from under the grow lights and outdoors under the eaves till I can transplant them; and maybe prep the new box planter I got yesterday. I have so many lettuce volunteers, some of which now have to be re-located before I can plant some of these other things in my raised beds. Other than cooking, email, reading the Sunday papers perusing my newly purchased Garden Guide for the Rogue Valley, and watching some of the tennis tournament at Indian Wells, I'm going to re-charge my battery a bit on this lazy, rainy Sunday and hope tomorrow brings renewed energy and a clearing of the weather for the planting marathon to continue.

Dinner tonight is a plain cheese pizza and margaritas. My dough and sauce are already made, so dinner will be easy.

Rain and worms in the pool kind of a day

After several intense, laborious days in our son and daughter-in-laws garden as well as my own, the universe decided I should have a lazy day by bringing in an all day rain. I can't say that it isn't welcome other than, perhaps, the fact that this rain may wash away a row of newly planted carrots seeds.

Today was to be an easier day for seedling care and planting some of the newly sprouted beet and leeks seeds in my raised beds, and dealing with a lot of catalogs and magazines that have been piling up while my focus has been on doing my imitation of an urban farmer in between the usual cooking, shopping and other household and life chores.

I must say, I don't feel one iota of guilt sitting here in bed in my lounging jammies and shopping on line for unglamorous things like vitamins, a new hose nozzle, a meat pounder and a set of 9 measuring spoons. The shopping spree, may continue since I have a few more garden catalogs to go through. I see the King Arthur flour catalog has a recipe for sourdough pretzels which is very tempting after a light breakfast of banana bread, and a planned, kale smoothie for lunch to offset the calories to come, in tonight's experimental pizza.

Hoping to get a bit more flavor in my New York style pizza dough recipe, I decided to add some freshly fed sourdough starter to it, and lower some of  water in my original recipe, to balance, it; but the consistency after partial kneading wasn't as tacky as I wanted so I started adding water till it felt a bit better, but not as wet a dough as my regular recipe.. Now, if it come out great, I have no idea of how much water I added, after the initial mixing; but I did redo the recipe last night and if this batch is a miss, I can try that one next.

Meantime it looks like the rain may have let up. Time to rescue the worms that are now swimming in the bottom of the pool. I don't know if this is the group I saved two days ago and put in the raised beds, or new visitors. Just what I wasn't looking forward to on this lazy, resting day - worm, lifeguard duty. False alarm, rain continues, so the worms are on their own. Could this be a version of worm suicide - like lemmings jumping off of cliffs? Inquiring minds need to know; or did they really think they could do a back dive off the edge of the pool and find their way back up. Guess they never bothered to notice we don't have a pool ladder.



 

What does you day look like

It's going to be sunny and 70 degrees today so the garden is the focus of the day. Prepped some soil and transplanted most of the garlic yesterday, and got the kitchen freezer cleaned out and organized and got the new freezer organized. It's now ready for some of the meat our son is sharing with us.

Todays "to do" list - before breakfast water seedlings, find seed packets for today's planting, soak beet seeds. After breakfast fertilize and add compost to areas of the raised beds I'll be planting today. After lunch, transplant spinach, kale, cauliflower, and broccoli seedlings, plant carrots, beet, and a few more spinach seeds.

Mid afternoon update garden calendar, read email and snail mail. Attempt to find a work around for the ongoing, thought it was fixed, problem of  iTunes which refusing to complete my syncing. Windows informs me in the error message that they'll let me know if they find a fix. So is it their problem as well as mine?

After dinner - collapse and watch some mindless TV and BBQ podcasts which our daughter tells me are very good. What does you day look like?

Planting time or another woman plans God laughs couple of days

It's been in the sixties, and no frost is forecast for the next ten days, so I went out to plant some of the sprouted scallions that I didn't get to do yesterday. Realizing that that my tiny table top grill was not going to work for cooking two chicken halves using the indirect heat method, Jim and went out before breakfast in search of a new grill. The early shopping was necessary because the new freezer was going to be delivered late morning. 

After breakfast there was the garage to sweep out and get ready for the new freezer. After lunch I had to get those un-assembled pieces of the new Weber grill  out of the box and put it together, as well as do early prep of some of the dinner sides. The grill worked great and I'm looking forward to trying more recipes using that indirect heating method which worked great for the chicken. I never had to baste or turn the chicken with this method - just used the right amount of coals, lay out the chicken cover and in 30-40 minutes it was brown, and perfectly done.

This morning I google "top Barbecue cookbooks" and found a good list and ordered a couple of used ones. If I need more information, I can check out county library system. There's much to learn, since my barbecuing has been limited to throwing a steak or burgers on the grill once or twice a year.

So today was the new day to plant those sprouted scallion seeds. Again, I thought - short easy job - just put some root fertilizer and compost in one square, work it in and plant. Unfortunately, I forgot to note on my last years planting grid, that I planted four squares of garlic in that bed late summer; and on top of that, there were also chives that needed to be moved. So a quick job turned into a much longer job of digging out deeply entrenched chives with a trowel, cleaning out a big pot with a deeply rooted, late annuals, so the chives could happily live where they never have to be moved.. 

There were also two parsley plants to dig up and move, and a few more squares to clean out. By this time my back was  begging for mercy, so I called it a day for the gardening, and will l dig up and transplant all that garlic tomorrow.

Now that my back is out of spasm, it's time to prep the veggies for tonight's yaki soba noodle dinner.  I might just have some sake with that tonight.

East Asia slipware 3 potters exhibit

Watching this was like a meditation - just lovely. And that little white teapot - what a treasure!

Yesterday was a very busy day and today will pretty well be the same. The seedlings have been watered and the scallion seeds have sprouted and need to be planted after breakfast. Later this morning the new freezer is being  delivered and I'll have to get that set up.

After lunch I'll be making some pico de gallo and pinto beans to go with tonight's El Pollo Loco chicken, There's also an upgrade of iTunes to do at some point, since I'm getting an error message when trying to sync my iPod. There's always something with these computers.

A Ceramics Monthly arrived yesterday and it would be nice to find a few minutes to peruse it; but I've been watching some of the Olympics during and in between chores and haven't had much time for reading other than email, a quick scan of the morning paper, some Pininterst inspiration viewing with my morning tea, and a couple of Facebook minutes.

The new grogged clay is patiently waiting for me to give it some attention. Tomorrow may be the day! But first, the slab roller once again must be cleared. It's my only work surface but it has to double as a holding area. I might just find time to do that today. I will certainly try.

Smogasboard kinds of a day

We were out and about with meetings and shopping yesterday. After a lot of research (way too much really), I finally settled on a freezer which will be delivered tomorrow. After an over two hour meeting at the lawyer's, it was time to shift into shopping mode. The first stop was the Asian grocery, then Fred Meyers for more groceries and finally Best Buy to order the freezer. All I could manage for dinner was a simple pasta Puttanesca which was easy since the sauce was already made.

So today became another smorgasbord kind of day, seedling watering, email and a few house hold chores after breakfast and then heading to the garage/studio to find places for and move a couple of bags for rock salt, and a few other things, as well as getting my very heavy slab roller pushed back an inch  to make way for the freezer.

Then it was time for lunch and veggie prep for the pea soup I made for another day.

I've also been making an easy reference, spacing and fertilizer chart for my square foot gardening beds. This year I will fertilize a bit more which I didn't have to do last year with that beautiful, very rich potting soil we used in the new beds. I have Mel Bartholomew's formula, from his Square Foot gardening book,  for making my own organic fertilizer but I will have to do a lot of searching around for some of the ingredients, like green sand. Composted leaf mold is another ingredient in the recipe, and I sure don't have any access to it in this house and I've never seen it for sale; but I will check Google to see if there is a commercial source for it.

Fortunately there was leftover quiche for dinner, so now it's time to finish my square foot garden spacing/fertilizing chart,  get that pea soup in the freezer, and make a marinade, and prep the chicken and get it marinated for tomorrow's El Pollo Loco chicken dinner. After that I may just have time to read the morning paper and a couple of days of snail mail; but I won't take any bets on that happening since I fell asleep sitting up last night after another busy day.

Day to buy some clay

The rain is back. Maybe I really should be searching out ark plans! First, there's breakfast to make and then off to the pottery supply store for a grogged version of my clay body, then to Harry and Davids so Jim can re-stock the wine cellar,, followed by food shopping at the organic grocery store and lunch at the Chinese buffet; and lastly, a quick look at freezers at Best Buy.

Thanks to a lot of searching on line, I found a few items that will make good  hump and slump molds and am eager to get some slab work done once I get the right clay. I've been using the grog free version of this body for throwing; but it needs grog if I want to do slab work. Guess I'm finally ready and even a bit eager to get back into the studio.

Last night I finished revising my garden plans and made new charts. Morning seedling watering and checking is done. More spinach popped up overnight, as well as the first leeks. The seedling nursery is doing well so far. My office/meditation room/greenhouse has a ceiling fan  and keeping that on, I have found, protects the seedlings from damping off - so far.

As soon as the rain lets up - hopefully,  in another day or so I'll be planting some scallion seeds and fava beans outdoors. Last year I planted those fava beans too late. Since then I have found that you are supposed to plant them the same time you plant peas. This time I'll plant them are our son and daughter-in laws garden, where I can space them further apart and guarantee larger pods. You don't get a lot of harvest for them as is, so I need to maximize the potential and doing the in the square foot gardening method didn't yield much. Planting them later as I did, was probably another reason for the lower yield.

Well, time to hit the shower and have a light, breakfast of fruit and nut bread before heading out and about for a day of shopping.

Laptop search a dud but good results from old seeds

After email, seedling care, and meal prep, I've spent most of the day reading up on laptop computers and am more confused than ever. Bottom line - I am going to keep my fingers crossed and see what spring or even next year brings. Apple is out for several reasons (initial cost, cost of having to replace software; and our daughter who switched to Apple recommended against it), Windows 8 is a disaster and Windows 9 may not be out for another year, so I'll stick with my ancient Dell and almost as old HP laptop which is still functioning well with Windows 7. That ancient Dell, like my ancient body has had some replacement parts, is moving slower, gets stuck once in a while; but still it lives.

My computer want list is for a 17" screen, good customer care (Dell is way down there lately), a 1 TB hard drive, good sound, non gaming, but able to play some games, and all the usb ports, SD, HDMI ports, bluetooth, etc. etc. Trying to match my want list with what is available, is not bringing up a lot of great reviews in the under $3,000 range . Maybe there will be some new models coming out this spring or summer. Meantime I'll hope that my current machines keep running well enough until I absolutely have to buy a new laptop. In case anyone is interested, my google search to find the best companies for support were Apple, and for non Apple Machines, Lenova and Samsung were the two top ones.

My seedlings are coming along well. This morning the first older, spinach seeds sprouted. Yesterday we got a break in the rain so I was able to get out and clean one of my raised beds and planted some snow peas that I sprouted in the house. I also revised my planting chart yesterday, so now I have to make clean grid plans for those beds. I also made separate plans for our son and daughter-in-laws garden. I don't know how much planting I'll do there other than squash and my excess seedlings and potatoes. Meal prep, bread making, more seed ordering, and watching the Olympics rounded out the day.

The family won't be up to the ranch as much this summer because of their new house remodeling and construction projects. I will be able to plant a bit more for our personal use, because we just decided to buy a small freezer. It will make my studio space tighter, and the positioning will necessitate moving the car to open it, but that really doesn't have to be a problem since I usually plan my meals about a week in advance and won't have to access that freezer on an every day basis. Slowly, but surely we keep finding ways to make this house and studio/garage space work for me.

Time now to re-draw these raised bed plans. It took a lot of time trying to juggle and incorporate companion planting, crop rotation and inter-cropping in the plan; but I finally have this years plans down after a few revisions. The studio must be growing some mold right now; but I've stopped feeling guilty about it. Don't know if that's a good thing or not; but it is what it is.

Takashi Yasudo wedging video

Nice alternative wedging method. Looks like it woud be a lot kinder on the wrists.

Not sure what today is going to look like. Got one computer backup fixed and backed up but still not able to get Norton to back up to the Toshiba stand alone hard drive on this HP laptop. May have to see if I can get some on line help from either Norton or Toshiba. Norton isn't able to recognize the drive and everything is saying the drive is fine. Also, when trying to copy and paste a file folder into the drive I'm getting that error "Incorrect MS Dos function". What the heck does that mean. So it will be back to Google to see if there are some suggested fixes. So far, nothing I have found has worked.

Meantime I'm going to enjoy my morning tea and watch the last hour of last night's Olympics coverage that I taped, thanks to Direct TV. We don't own a smart phone, but we do have a smart TV. 

A morning chuckle

Post by Brett Kern Ceramics.

This Brett Kern video is a hoot. My favorite part is the one arm wedging - hilarious!

After all this drought, we are now being warned of possible flooding. Maybe it's time to look up ark plans.

I may have fixed that Toshiba hard drive. Funny how accidents can turn into something positive. Yesterday this HP laptop didn't like something and uttered the most gawd awful screeching, screaming, high pitched, non stop sound; and the computer would not shut off. So I unplugged everything, turned the computer upside down in an attempt to remove the battery; but couldn't get the door to open and when I turned it right side up, tried to shut it down, this time it worked. So I reconnected everything and took a peek at that stand alone hard drive; and the ever present message saying it needed formatting showed again. This time I selected the quick format and lo and behold it seems to have worked. So right now I'm hand copying my documents drive. It has progressed a bit but seems to be stuck in one spot for the past 15 minutes. So I may be celebrating a bit prematurely. :-(

The rain never let up enough for me to plant those peas, but I'm hoping I can get to that today. We have a delivery that I have to sign for today and a pickup scheduled, so I'll have to be here in the morning while Jim is at the store getting me a couple of things for my Mexican chicken and margarita dinner tonight.

I'm planning on a little bit of studio time after lunch - finally! A couple of days browsing Pinterest has definitely given me a little motivation to walk away from these computer issues and the ever growing paper pile. Happy Valetine's day everyone!

Cooking and computers

Did some morning emails, fed my sour dough starter, and spent some time browsing through Pinterest looking to get me inspired to get back to work. Now that breakfast is done,  I thought I'd take a blogging break before I head to the kitchen again to make some cookies that will be in the mail for a unsuspecting, hard working, recipient  friend of a friend who could use a treat. If this sounds confusing, I'll explain.

Gail Galusky gave me hours of her professional time a few days ago, and did an amazing job to get my computer cleaned up a lot, got iTunes uninstalled and re-installed, and refused any compensation. After my bit of insistence, she finally suggested I made some cookies for a friend. What a great idea. She termed it "pay forward". :-) Thank you, thank you, thank you, a million times Gail!

Yesterday we went out to the mall (my once a year visit into that den of commercialism and confusing shopping), in search of a new comforter and new sheets and it was a useless trip. Some food shopping, lunch out, a stop at Ross for less, hoping they may have something we'd like in their bedding department was also a bust. After getting home, there were groceries to unpack, more seed pots to fill, spinach to plant and dinner to make.

My first seedlings of escarole, broccoli and cauliflower are up and the first fluorescent grow light fixture is set up in my office/meditation room. If this rain lets up, I have some peas that have sprouted on damp hand towel paper that could use planting outdoors. Otherwise this will be mainly a cooking and computer day with a bit of time getting some potting soil in a couple of small pots to transplant a few small basil plants.

After 3 days of formatting a piece of junk Toshiba stand alone hard drive, which I hoped would make it work again, turned into a bust. When I tried to open the drive I got an error message telling me I need to format it. What the h*ll! GRRR!

Seems these Toshiba hard drives can go to sleep and never wake up under some circumstances. So I will be looking for another stand along hard drive or maybe some on line storage. I had signed up for Jcloud and that was a bust. It was about  hundred dollars and didn't tell you how slow it's transfer rates were; and of course, it's only after you pay for the service, you find that out and they then offer you faster speed for a lot of extra dollars of course. With the problems with this stand alone hard drive, I'm not sure what direction to take for backing up my photos, music and data files. Any suggestions and recommendations  would be greatly appreciated. 

This spring I'll be buying a new laptop - just waiting to get past a month or so of mercury retrograde and seeing the direction some of these companies take in the next couple of month. It's either going to be a new Dell or I may finally switch to Apple. I'm really sick of Windows and that's putting it mildly! The latest version 8  is gawd awful from all I've heard and read, so one option would be to get one with Windows 7 and hopefully upgrade if they fix windows 8 or use Windows 7 and upgrade to windows 9 down the line.

Apple's new screen evidently sucks - doesn't display well outdoors, and the other Apple downside is it costs more, gives you less memory options, fewer USB ports (only 2 in their high end laptop), and I'd have to pay for a lot of new software. So the consideration are going to be will Apple fix that screen in the next few months, will Windows 8 get fixed, and will my software work with Windows 8 since I had problems with some of it even working right with Windows 7. Basically it's two not so great choices at the moment.

Time to forget about computers for a couple of hours and make some toll house cookies.

10 Best Cities to be an Artist

10 Best cities to be an artist
Interesting article. Think my choice would be San Francisco with Atlanta a close second. I never like to be too far from the ocean and a milder winter climate is definitely a factor for me. I'd probably settle for the Napa Valley - close enough to the Ocean and San Francisco, and a little slower paced.

This morning I'm continuing copying all my data to my stand alone hard drive. All the documents and photos are done, so I should be done with that job today; and then I can try fixing some of the problems with  friends help. Some wonderful Facebook friends warned me that RegCure Pro is malware and suggested I remove it, which I did.

This morning I watched the rest of last nights Olympic coverage and Jay Leno's last Tonight show. I'm so glad I taped it! It was a wonderful and emotional goodbye.

We had a lovely dinner with our son last night and I was somewhat over served. Boy, does he have a great wine cellar! When we got home we watched part of the Olympics that I had taped, and by ten o'clock, my throbbing head informed me that the wine had won, so I took a Tylenol for the headache and called it a night.

It's raining today and I'm hoping we get a small window of no rain so I can get out and plant a few snow peas. My little seedling cells are ready to plant, so I'll be starting the first group kale, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower and leeks today. Our son is coming over for a bit so I'll have him take my grow lights down from the rafters, and I'll get those set up this afternoon.

Today is pretty much a repeat of yesterday - computer work, some kitchen time, gardening chores, dinner at our sons and little, or no time for the studio. I'm taping the opening ceremonies of the Olympics and we'll watch that when we get home. One of the NBC people doing the coverage said she's been to a couple of rehearsals and said it's going to be a great show. It is certainly the costliest Olympics ever - costing more than the last 3 or more Olympics combined.Wow!

3 snowflakes

3 snowflakes - I swear that's about all the snow we got this morning. The forecast said we'd get 1/4". Jim answered the front door and got hit with these loner flakes and that was it. Rain is due this afternoon - certainly hope we get some. It's desperately needed here.

The studio has been ignored this past month while I dealt with a virus that hung on that long; but I did manage a couple of hours of studio time two days ago to remix a pale green slip, and  slip a few pots which were a bit past leather hard but not bone dry. After lunch I'll get back in there and do some under glaze and sgraffito decorating.

Yesterday I got some of my seedling pots cleaned, filled them with seed starting mix and checked my Farmers Almanac. Looks like tomorrow, according to the moon signs, is a good day to start some above ground cold weather crops like kale, cabbage, collards and peas. So I updated my gardening calender for the month, then spent most of the afternoon going through old seed packages, discarding a lot and putting them in new, dated boxes. Some seeds like tomatoes can still be viable for 5 years or more, so I'll test those in another month or so.

I'm still dealing with old computer problems and as of yesterday, a new one. After a windows update or iTunes update, I'm now getting an  error message and can't open iTunes or install a new one because I'm getting an error message that I'm missing a dll file. Found out a lot of people have been getting the same error after an iTunes update. One of the on line fixes said to uninstall iTunes.So after uninstalling it, and attempting a re-install, I got the same error message, so it was time to search Google for another fix. An ad for RegCure pro showed that they had a fix for this problem,. So, I downloaded RegCure Pro yesterday and it was still running by the time I went to bed and woke up this morning to find that the old Dell laptop had 9042 problems with two categories judge to be critical. And just when I was going to try to fix everything, a half an hour ago, the program froze. So now I'm having to rescan the computer. Has one one here ever used this or any other register cleaning, repair software? Norton says that program is safe, with the caveat that is does crash about once a month. So couldn't it wait until I cleaned the registry! Gheesh! Anyone else had this problem and found a fix???? Some of these registry program cause more problems than they solve!