Letting go

A simple form, but the glaze effect speaks volumes.

This little bowl vase will look wonderful with flowers of any color!  I imagine even an Ikebana treatment!

Past the first blush of spring

 After a week of rains, and now a couple of days without, most of the path up from the lower parking lot to the studio is just green and more green. (Not that I'm complaining!)

A bit of Mountain Laurel greets me still.

A

And someone gifted the studio with some wonderful peonies...which if I bury my nose into them, I can smell their wonderful scent.

I won't promise that this is the last of my wedding photos that I'm bringing to my collection, but I couldn't miss the children of the royals!  Just think what they will think of these photos when they are grown!

Antique cars anyone?

 A whimsical sculpture of a semi-truck door and a metal sculpted dog in the window...among many other sculptures on the grounds around the Grovewood Gallery.

 The man who owned a car dealership in Asheville and started the car collection.

 The weaving shed turned into garage for vintage and antique cars...

Photo of William Jennings Bryan riding in a cavalcade of cars.

There were actually 2 of these old time clocks where workers punched in and out, for various industries to support the Biltmore mansion nearby

Do you know what kind of car this is? Front view of the one shown above in side view.

Grovewood Gallery

My son in black, and 2 friends he went to college with in FL many years back.

But wait.  I saw an antique car parked at Lake Tomahawk the other day.  So it's road-worthy!

I am thinking that's a rumble seat on an old Model T, what do you think?

Perhaps the people pictured in this postcard drove similar cars to the amusement park...as I kind of missed the topic this week for Sepia Saturday.

Romance is alive and well

Duke and Duchess of Sussex

We all talked about The Royal Wedding, Sat and Sun...and just a bit on Mon.  But we mainly were struck by how American the service was!  Bishop Curry's sermon was loved by most of us.  And the choir singing Stand By Me!  Super.  But actually, I've never seen a wedding which had that influence. It was kind of over the top.  Most of the weddings I've been too were pretty "English" actually.

The other ongoing big visual is from Hawaii this week, actually this month!

But daily rain has helped set the new plants at the church, so I'm happy for that!

I must also mention how great the gardeners are who showed up last week to dig and plant, which was a hot day, but the results are fantastic looking.

Where have all the bloggers gone?

How does one start blogging? Why does one continue?

There are a few stalwart blogs active these days, and I must look at a dozen of them almost daily.

I started blogging because I like sharing photos and stories about events/people/places. I like that I can do it on my own time.

Japanese dogwood

As my COPD and Bronchiectasis has progressed, I'm required to sit and use a nebulizer to inhale a couple of medicines which help me cough out the sticky phlegm which settles in the far reaches of my lungs.  So I've got a laptop and can type while clinching the little mouthpiece and doing the half hour of breathing.  What do I do then? I read lots of things on the internet, and also load my blog pages.

That's at least twice a day.  Ancestor sleuthing is one of my favorite pursuits.  My 3 family trees still have a lot of people I haven't discovered yet.  I'm now enjoying the brothers and sisters of people in my direct line, the great uncles and aunties.  And looking at their lives not only gives me hundreds of new cousins, I often find out facts about my direct ancestors...so it's a win/win use of my time.

I wish I didn't sit in front of a digital screen, nor that my family would, as much as we do.  Wishes are horses and we all would ride, said the old rhyme.  We don't need horses to get around any more, and maybe we don't even sincerely have wishes either.  We do have our vision plugged into fantasies, games, words shared through texts, and trivia which zooms into our devices.

This lovely tree is in the parking lot where I get my bi-weekly allergy shots

I noticed several years ago (maybe 6-8) that the blogs started having "memes" or a theme which could be contributed to by other bloggers...and then found the joy of commenting on others' blogs.   I continue to share weekly blogs to my favorites, as a challenge and an interest in the other folks who I've gotten to know pretty well.

But the number of bloggers I follow is steadily declining.

We used to have a Pottery Bloggers site, where other bloggers would not only share pottery information, it would be gathered monthly so that site would be the go-to place, organized by different topics.  And then at the end of the year, the administrator of the site would add up the number of blogs each potter had had listed (simple algorithm) and become one of the Top Pottery Bloggers of the year.  My blog was coming in in the teens each year.  I was fine with others who posted daily about pottery, since my posts are not always on that topic.

Then came the burst of Facebook posts...and many bloggers would share their blogs over there (myself included.)  They were being seen by many more people, if you consider the number of comments, "likes" and shares, which represented maybe a quarter of those who actually saw the post.  However, of that big group of people, maybe only a few would actually click on the blog and go read it.  I never knew, but figured it was like most group surveys, something in the 10% or less area.

So I still blog.  And enjoy the few other bloggers who share comments with me, going both ways.  It's like a Facebook group (which I've also enjoyed joining) where maybe these dozen people spend some time every day listening (reading) each other's posts, and maybe commenting if they are so moved.

Will I continue?

Will I write a book instead?

My autobiography seemed like a good goal when I was younger, thinking of all the juicy stuff I was doing in the 70s, and when I retired wouldn't it be fun to write about it...but I've forgotten most of it.  My many journals have silly things recorded.  And with the faster paced lives we now lead, reading any book is a luxury compared to those digital devices.

After all, I read most of the library books on a digital device already!

But holding a nice physical book, reading and turning pages, I want to keep doing, and help keep "bricks and mortar" libraries in business!  Each of us does need to work to do that!

Remember that people employed by organizations are being replaced by robots every day...and we need those people to be employed! They need to too of course.

Happy surprise

I was so happy to meet a couple of folks who were touring the Black Mountain Center for the Arts...and who purchased one of my decorative plates.  But the purpose for the plate was the biggest surprise of all!

The plate was to be a gift for a woman who was retiring from a workshop which occurs yearly.  I asked what kind (thinking of the many religious retreats held in the mountains every summer.)  This time it was my own denomination, Unitarian Universalist!  I just gave a big hug to these lovely ladies who are part of the SUUSI program. They were just returning home to Greensboro after doing some set-up work before the workshop to be held in July...with around 1200 participants.

I've never been to this program, but have heard about it for years.  So maybe I'll try it someday soon.  It seems much more interesting now that I've met these two women.

And the other side of this gift is that half the sale's proceeds go to the Center for the Arts, the parent organization of the community Clay Studio where I spend most of my days making more pottery.  There's certainly truth to the saying, "whatever goes round, comes round."

I betcha thought I'd stopped making pots!

Stay home, cough, go to lunch, cough, go to doctor, cough, drop by studio, cough.... Whenever the brochiectasis flares up, I tend to drop away from many of my usual activities.

Then I was dealing with side effects of antibiotics, which I had no need to actually take, but someone at the pulmonoligist office prescribed for me...until I finally went in and saw a doctor who said, you never needed those in the first place!

Anyway, here are a couple of little vases that just came out of the kiln.

A lemniscate shows a bit of infinity.  Other designs just show off!

More pretties...

 Rhododendrons overlooking the terraced beds where we just planted vegetables...beside Lake Tomahawk.  If you look closely you'll see the lone yacht being maneuvered about on the water by remote control.

 An interesting chocolate and creamy iris color...almost done blooming for this year.

 Miss bumble bee was doing her job!