A Break In the Rain

Finally! A slight break in the rain last week!

Three days of glorious sun! 🌞

Which means I have been busy in my back porch studio and back yard.

The first job I tackled in my back porch studio was cleaning my kiln shelves. As a potter, keeping kiln shelves in tip top shape is essential even though it is one of my least favorite jobs.

I use high alumina kiln shelves in my electric kiln. I find these shelves to be way more affordable than other shelves that require less rigorous maintenance.

To protect my kiln shelves from unexpected glaze drips and runs from glazes, I paint my shelves with a kiln wash.

And over time, repeated applications of kiln wash can make for uneven firing surface. Layers of kiln wash also crack, chip and flake off over time which can potentially ruin glazed pottery pieces. When the kiln shelf surface become flakey and uneven it is time to sand off the layers of kiln wash which is what I did this past week.

Pictured on the far left are the kiln shelves before sanding. Pictured on the far right are the kiln shelves after sanding ~all even and smooth! I do this task about every two to three years, thank goodness!

Next, I threw mugs!

I really really like how the dragonfly mug(s) came out. In fact, these came about quite by accident! See, the first mug I made suffered a deep gouge from my fingernail. 🙄

Thinking the freshly made gouged mug was beyond repair, I “saved” it by pressing my dragonfly stamp into and over the gouge! I added more dragonflies around the base of the mug to make it look as if I meant to do that. 😁 (pictured on the left)

Then, I had quite a few soup mugs already thrown that needed handles. So, handles where added to the six mugs that were handleless (pictured on the right).

Because of all the rain, the garden needed attention namely, weeding.

I decided not to plant a vegetable garden this year because last year our neighborhood squirrel ate every last tomato and rabbits ate all of our lettuce except for a patch I planted in a pot and kept on the porch.

I did, however, buy one sweet cherry tomato plant.

It now sits in a pot surround by nasturtiums seedlings and I keep it on the back porch. On sunny days, I move the pot out into the grass and bring in back on the porch by days end.

Pictured in the middle, is a volunteer tomato plant growing in our garden out back. I will watch it as it matures as I am sure squirrel will be too.

Pictured on the right are some sad looking sunflowers. I had left over sunflowers seeds from years past . I was not about to plant them in our garden as I did in previous years. So I “hid” them from squirrel along our fence line. Sadly, the sunflower seedlings have been attacked by hungry caterpillars! 🙄

Meanwhile, the reforestation project is going quite well thanks to squirrel!

Our neighborhood squirrel, has gifted us with one Buckeye Tree, one Butter Nut tree and three Oak trees! (Several of our neighbors have had huge trees cut down over the past couple of years which, I believe, has upset the neighborhood squirrels 🐿️)

Grandson was happy to help me pot up the three oak seedlings from around the yard this past week.

I’m waiting for these little seedlings to grow a little bigger and stronger plus I’m not quite sure where to plant them in the back yard. Because they are all nut trees, I do know they will not be close to the house.

More rain this week but the weather will not deter all the things that need to be done.

This week I will live one day at a time. I will take life calmly, one day at a time, and that’s enough, leaving in the hands of God what I can’t change and the future that is yet to come. ~ author unknown