2016-02-24 - Wednesday - Tea bowls and a happy little guy

Wednesday night I started remaking the tea bowls I began before the holidays. I let those get way too dry to trim so I slaked down the clay and started over again. I threw them off the hump and was pleased that I actually had some siblings. Sometimes you make siblings, sometimes their cousins, and all too often for me they are neighbors.

I plan on making more in this cycle.

I was the last person to leave (as usual) and when I checked to make sure the door was locked in the front classroom, I saw Amy Sanders' stuff out for her Thursday morning class. I couldn't resist leaving her a little present for the morning so I made this little guy.

He was happy, I was happy, and I hope he made Amy smile when she found him.

.

2015-09-09 - Wednesday - Weeds and pots

I've talked before about the scourge of the porcelain berry coming over our fence from the non-tended yard of our neighbor. It's really annoying. Our yard is not always the most neatly trimmed, but we don't let invasive weeds flourish and we sure as hell don't let them invade the neighbor's yards.

I'm going to cut everything off with the electric hedge trimmer and push the bulk of it back over on their side. I might spray it with some kind of weed killer after pushing it over to keep it from coming right back. This lack of maintenance is irresponsible and annoying.

Something that's not so annoying is when I get to Clayworks to make pots. I did that on Wednesday night when I made another snorkel pot and variation on a garlic pot. Sort of a garlicky pot.

.

2015-06-01 - Monday - Pumpkins and terrible weed

I have a volunteer pumpkin vine growing in my (too cool) compost pile from last fall's pumpkin. Since it's growing in straight compost it's very vigorous and spreading rapidly. We'll see if anything comes of it.

We have some very irritating neighbors to the rear of our house. They erected a tall wooden fence before moving a stick of furniture into the house. The workers who built the fence let much of the scrap lumber fall in our yard and left it there. The new fence was built inside their existing metal fence creating about of foot of no-man's land where weeds readily grow. Their dogs are constantly barking at me whenever I'm in my yard.

One of the most irritating things is that they planted some trees about six feet from the fence and they don't tend anything between the trees and the fence. This means that any weeds and vines that grow in the area come right over the fence. One year they had a bumper crop of 7-8 foot thistle plants that all went to seed. I'm still fighting the results of that.

In the last couple of years, it's mainly poison ivy vine, virginia creeper, and the dreaded porcelain berry. This plant grows like kudzu and latches onto everything it can reach. I am constantly slashing and spraying it, but like the tide, it just keeps coming in. I suppose it would help if they were fighting it on their side of the fence, but I'm apparently the only one battling it. Grrr. You can see it all coming over the fence behind the compost pile.

I've never seen these people, let alone met them, but I sure wish they'd take a little bit more responsibility with their yard.

Good fences don't always make good neighbors.

Pumpkin vine eating my compost.

Pumpkin flower.

Porcelain berry [shudder].

.