Works in progress - Spirit Animals and other wall hangings

I'm pretty excited about this new body of work I've started; it was inspired by the call for submissions for the upcoming Halloween show at Swoon ("Spectre").  In thinking about "ghost animals" I did some reading online about different animals of mythological significance, and set to work on the following wall hangings.  Everything is carved and drying, the plan is to glaze these all Chun white at Cone 6:

White Buffalo

"Spirit Bear" (a white bear found in BC)

White Rabbit

White Stag

I'd like to make more animals in this series and am looking at different symbols I could carve on to them.  The spirals reference the cosmic spiral, and the 8 pointed stars inadvertently reference the Star of Lakshmi (Hindu goddess of wealth and beauty).   The next ones I make may include some drawing of sacred geometry on animals of significance in Chinese Feng Shui. I'm excited about this body of work because I've been getting away from the trap of becoming a 'production' potter, and slowing down in my practice and treating each piece more meditatively.  Each piece presents an opportunity to calm myself down, there's something compelling about the ability to trap the energy of these intentions into matter.


Here are a few other wall hanging animals I've started, these will have more colours.

flying snowy owl and smaller bear

ring necked pheasant

Garden Update - August 5th

Well I meant to do this more frequently, but here it is.  All this pics were taken yesterday, August 4th, except the first one.  

Things we've been eating from the garden to date: a few currants, raspberries, broccoli, broccoli leaves, kale, turnip, pak choi, the green part of our onions, summer squash, zucchini, romaine, bush beans, pole beans, peas, basil, cilantro, dill, oregano, mint, rosemary, thyme, radishes, beet greens, New Zealand spinach, and quite a few ripe tomatoes already... a lot more diverse than last year!   

I still need to work on the whole 'planting things in succession' so as not to have 135 heads of lettuce ripen all at once!  Some things I'm letting go to seed already (radishes, cilantro), hoping to try my hand at seed saving this year.  It's a delight to watch everything grow, and the splashes of colour that the flowers planted throughout give. 

Radishes, Romaine and herbs; this pic was taken July 8th - the rest are from August 4th

looking down into the garden

Pumpkin patch with nasturtiums

Peas! next year we should plant more than one row of these

cucumbers, with flowering petunias and marigolds, and towering sunflowers - this year I spread the sunflowers throughout the garden, there are about 12 that are growing giant

Winter squash patch, with some trays of new seedlings (more lettuce, cilantro, beets, broccoli, kale).  Marigolds and radishes going to seed are in there too.

One shot of our 8 rows of tomatoes, the little plants are "Tiny Tims" which are delicious and prolific though one of the few non-heirloom varieties we planted. there are parsley, basil and cilantro (now flowering) throughout, as well as petunias

Currant patch, they grew so big! with our cabbage/potato/kale/broccoli patch behind it.

3 bean pole teepees this year, I did the "3 sisters" thing of planting corn and squash around them too.  There is a patch of bush beans in the front with some corn and sunflowers.

Red cabbages, and potatoes. I love the look of the petunias poking out around them.  We see snakes and frogs in this part of the garden, ridding it of pests for us

Curly kale, and broccoli behind. We've made LOTS of kale chips in the dehydrator already

another view of the teepees, with our romaine patch in front.  we've eaten A LOT of salads...

view of the tomato rows, some plants are chest - high, with the odd sunflower poking up.  the row in front has new seedlings of lettuce and cilantro that I'm planting where some of the onions didn't grow so well.

this part needs weeding, but has black eyed susans, lupines, marigolds, lavender and raspberries.  I planted the raspberries last year from small canes, the rest I started from seed.

a view up to our house

cucumbers, carrots, petunias, and other things that are hard to see like NZ spinach

our summer squash patch, with the pumpkin patch behind it

more tiny tims, I love how the petunias look against them

a winter squash plant busting out from the patch on its own

Garden Update

Happy Birthday yesterday, Mom! Happy Father's Day, dad!

The subtitle of this post should be "how insane we are" as we dug this whole garden by hand. I finally finished planting the last of the flowers in it today.  These pics were all taken yesterday, and I'm throwing them on the blog mainly because it's nice to have a record of where we're at, to compare year over year.  way bigger garden this year, considering last year most of what we grew was in the section with just the pole beans and lettuce.

Views from the top of the garden:

We took up all the silage plastic we put down last year, making the area relatively easy to dig. Though some beds had a lot of rocks, which we used to make borders.  Some of the rocks were rather large...

Pumpkin Patch: Giant pumpkins, Connecticut Field Pumpkins and Sugar pumpkins. above there's a patch with some lupines and sunflowers

Summer squash patch (zucchini and some other small yellow type which already has little squashes on it)

winter squash patch (acorn, butternut, buttercup, spaghetti)

 Currants! the Currant clippings my mom mailed me last year are doing great, most of them survived the winter, along with one gooseberry bush.

A few of the bushes actually have currants on them already, wasn't expecting that so soon!

We ended up with about 14 big rows in the main part, 2 rows onion with some turnips and jalapeno peppers, 1 row with beets, bok choy and radishes, 1 row carrots, 1 row peas, 2 rows cucumbers, 1 row celery, and, um, 8 rows of tomatoes.  around 200 plants, 10 types.  this was after me spending the spring insisting on thinning the seedlings but giving in to Brendan who was all "no no no, we'll plant them all".  After last year's tomato disaster I don't mind if we do end up with 2 tonnes.  (calculating 10 lbs/plant). perhaps 2013 will see our first "Tomato Festival". I planted 10 kinds: Tiny Tim, Humbolti, Gardener's Delight (all cherry tomatoes) and Cole, Olpaka, Amish Paste, Brandywine, Scotia, Stupice and Early Latah.  So far I have to say the seeds I got from Annapolis Seed are great ( all except the brandywine, scotia and tiny tim).

Raspberries on the left, which I planted last year, with a few new beds of flowers and herbs in between. the row in the middle is mostly beets, peas on the right

Peas, carrots which are just starting to come up, 2 rows of moneymaker cucumbers which aren't doing very well, we fertilized with fish fertilizer today but started some more seeds too

tomatoes

more tomatoes. I've been reading up on companion planting a lot so the tomatoes are interspersed with basil, cilantro, parsley, and petunias

tomatoes with some basil plants

peas.. I learned if you start peas in side and then take off for weeks, come back, and its too rainy to plant the garden for 2 more weeks, your plants get huge and gangly and easily destroyed in transplanting as it is so easy to snap their vines.  very few pea plants lived through this ordeal so I started new seeds in the row right away, the new seedlings are coming along and I learned my lesson...

turnips, the leaves of which are getting devoured by flea beetles, and a row and a half of onions

Romaine Lettuce Patches, I just started another seeding of romaine as well as some buttercrunch lettuce today

This year we have 3 bean pole teepees, this shot also shows one of the 3 sprinklers Brendan installed in the garden, they work really well

Scarlet Runner beans, one plant is flowering already

The last area has one row potatoes, a few rows each red cabbage, kale, broccoli, and a new rhubarb plant, which is near the broccoli because apparently they'll grow well together. I planted some oregano and petunias in between the cabbage plants to help discourage pests.  I'm pleased to see there are snakes and birds frequenting this patch, hopefully eating more pests.

Red cabbage and oregano plants.  There are some petunias too, but they're hard to see

Broccoli, with a rhubarb plant in the back corner

A row of bush beans in with the kale

Kale! we ate a few leaves today already. I regret not thinning the plants sooner or transplanting into bigger pots. next year.

Our fence, Brendan put in fence posts with cord, and then attached extender posts to the top to make the thing 8' tall.  There are also club soda can windchimes around it.  Hopefully this works, or if the deer brave the fence they get tangled up in it and we can eat them.  I've been trying to keep the more delicious plants in the center of the garden, and plant things they apparently don't like around the edges to trick them.

Mint patch I started last year growing well: catnip for the cat, 2 oregano plants, a lavender, and chocolate mint, peppermint, spearmint and english mint.  The mint is super good to drink just pour boiling water over a few sprigs. I love mint and deer don't, so I'll probably bust some of this up to plant at the edges of the garden this year.

a couple giant sunflower plants, above the pumpkin patch. I started a bunch of sunflowers this year but instead of a big row there are a few groupings around the garden

Everything got planted out by the first few days of June, and with the exception of the new pea shoots, onions and turnips almost everything was started inside and grown under lights. Next year we'll be more diligent about transplanting seedlings into 4" pots so the plants are even bigger and more robust before they go into the garden, so we'll be getting some more (T-8) light kits.

It's fun to see how much everything has grown that was started last year, as well as how much further ahead we are this year.  Last year my first 'garden update' was July 6: .  Wow! Our pumpkins and squash plants look deceptively big in this older post, because we crammed in a few plants/hill.  this year everyone has a lot more room to grow.