August Clay Camp

There are a couple of these spiders that have made tomato plants their homes for the last month. The other day, I found a third smaller one and fed it a grasshopper which it successfully wrapped into its web.

The first week of August was the last clay camp at Mud Slingers Pottery. What a great group to finish with! There was a lot of imaginative and fun work going on. I hope to encourage this creativity in the science classroom as I embark on my student teaching starting next week!

I've been prep talking my two dogs, about how they're going to be home without walks for longer periods of time. These talks are mostly for my own good, but maybe they get some sense of my feelings. 

Garden life

Cayenne peppers strung to dry. 

I've been using them in my dill pickles... makes them a little hot.

Bud of a volunteer watermelon vine in the bean bed.

Colossus pea blossom.

Volunteer pumpkin vine growing next to the front door.

The small egg on the right is the first from our tiny black pullet. 

The left egg is your average egg size.

Okra to be frozen.

Kale and nasturtium.

Sunflowers and red hill okra.

Pollinator.

Frosty blackberries, ready to eat!

Kiln unloading

Keeping up with the garden

Picking the cucumbers and tomatoes is a daily task here. Every few days I pickle around 8 quarts of parade cucumbers and dehydrate, can, or cook down into a sauce, let's just say, enough tomatoes. The okra plants are shaded out by the tomatoes and are slim pickings, but I have pickled one pint. I also try and bake bread regularly and have been dehydrating, freezing, and making into ice cream, peaches I am given by Greene's produce. Right now, chick peas are cooking for hummus, a sugary cream mixture is cooling for peach ice cream, and tomatoes are waiting to be blanched and peeled. Yesterday, I tried my hand at homemade mayonnaise, and it turned out pretty good. Maybe a bit more vinegar and a little less garlic. A new movable chicken a-frame cage is in the works, which is very exciting. Pottery? 

I am a solid three weeks behind schedule on the Hospice angels, but there is a glaze load cooling at the moment. It should be ready to unload by tomorrow morning. I hope much of it will be ready for the farmer's market Saturday morning. 

Seeds saved from our dill plants.

Dill

Japanese climbing cucumber. 

They have a short shelf life, but are in my opinion, more flavorful than the parade cucumbers I grow and pickle.

Harvested grain (maybe barley?) from chicken scratch.

If you can catch 'em, the chickens love 'em.

Okra blossom.

Lettuce flowering.

July Clay Camp Creations

July clay camp is coming to a close. Helping the kids figure out what they want to create and making it possible with my technical knowledge of clay is my purpose. I try and minimize restrictions on what they are allowed to do. I make sure their pots won't explode in the kiln or have any other complications. I enjoy seeing their minds at work and imaginations brewing. Some of the kids expressed extreme interest in the wheel so, although my wrist has been sore for the past week, they all tried their hand at the wheel in additions to the hand-built projects. 

Backyard Jewel

This is a photograph of the crawl space door of our rental house. I though the peeling paint, glass knob, and hydrangeas looked beautiful together.