Using pottery to cook (and drink)

Can you guess what's about to be mixed up?

A couple of eggs, a couple of my bowls, a couple cups of flour (1/4 of it whole wheat) and a Dan Finnegan mug with my coffee...to become banana bread.  With a twist.

I was out of nuts, and figured the sunflower seeds would be ok, but they were salted (make a face here!) ...so I chopped up some apple for a new taste in bread.

Before...

I'll be back in an hour to see what has happened...

 OooooO! It rose more than my last bread batch.

Love that first slice.  I do miss the nuts, but the apples came out just fine.

Flaming azaleas and glaze notes

Here's a nice vase for some flowers...

I love the metalic look from using nutmeg glaze first, then matte black over it.

In the dark shadows of spring woods in North Carolina, the Flame Azalea looks so startling and beautiful.  These were planted along our parking lot in my apartment complex.  They are still beautiful, but the beauty doesn't have the correct backdrop, IMHO (in my humble opinion).

Incidentally, these photos were taken a couple of weeks ago, and they have now ceased blooming.

We've had a heat wave (yes in 80s frequently) while no rain for about 2 weeks, so most of these blooms have withered already.  Now a bit of rain has come, but I am glad to have these blossoms in the computer available.

Fortunately residents can have flowers on their porches and balconies, so they are watered and cared for, and much appreciated.

 Unfortunately our dove has flown away and left her egg.  I am sorry.  It was in the 40s for two nights running, and I guess she got too cold.  Blackberry winter, the folks around here call it.  (I've saved the precious egg in the refrigerator, not knowing what to do with it, and yet not wanting to open it.)

My Mother's Day thoughts

Mother's Day is this Sunday.

I think I'll talk about mothering.  It's so different than fathering.  Yes, that sounds sexist, but I know of no men who give birth or nurse the babies.  So from day one, a mother has given life itself.  Then she comes up with this mysterious milk right out of her body also, to keep that life going for months...with regular demands for it.

By the time a child has begun to walk, talk and feed itself, a father can pretty well do everything a mother can do for it.  Though few do.

I loved how my children were waist high, then shoulder high, and then all surpassed me as adolescents.  These young men then knew more than I did, and acted like it.  They finished schooling, married really great women, and now I have 6 grandchildren.

Giving birth is not easy! There's seldom a remembrance of how hard that task actually was. 

As my grandchildren arrived, I found out I was not the mother who my son's honored on Mother's Day anymore.  The wives who had given birth to their children were the mothers in my sons' lives from then on.

It's as it has ever been.

I honor all who give birth to creativity and sustaining life...not just those who have a baby.

The mothers of invention need to be recognized, and we also need to acknowledge many mothers have babies who may not have been completely nurturing.  Honoring life and creativity is what it's all about.

My current "baby" lying next to the mask I made of Muffin many years ago, and the box under it with her ashes.  Besides them is another form of life (green) in a beautiful pot by my friend, Cathy Babula.

Fences make good...

I look through my old photos and find some bridge railings and fences...

Before being repaired, a wooden bridge over a local creek.  It's sort of like a fence.
 
Picture a man leaning on a fence, holding a lamb, and a shepherd's crook in the other hand, with a sheep dog patiently lying and waiting in the distance. Then come up with something in your collection of photos which will link to this meme...HERE at Sepia Saturday.

Flat Creek itself below the now repaired footbridge.

The same bridge in wintertime.

Another fence in my neighborhood.  Here I look over the Blue Ridge Parkway down toward Burnett Reservoir, the source of all water in the Asheville watershed.

Another wooden bridge, this time over the spillway flowing out of Lake Tomahawk.  Also a purple orb floating over the picture!

Lake Tomahawk as it flows into its spillway.

A small animal with soft fur, my cat when she first came to live with me, Panther (or Painter) back in
2011.  She may not be a little lamb, but is about the right size.  And believe me she sheds enough fur in the spring that I wish I could gather it and knit some sweaters from it!

See you back here on Sunday, because I'm off to the Tailgate Market in Black Mountain for Saturday morning.  Hope it isn't as cold as the forecast says it will be!  And I'm wishing the Mud Buddies sell lots of our pottery!

Pottery just oozing along

Well, it's only oozing when I'm throwing it, and the water mixed with clay creates what we all loved to play with as kids...mud!

What happened to these after they were glazed and fired to cone 6?

 I thought anyone who loves cats like I do, should paint a few on some mugs.  So a tiger orange one is licking his paw under a tree on a very big mug.

The white cat looks a bit ghostly.

And the green-eyed black cat looks kind of brown.

The others haven't been glazed yet, so I'm waiting for inspiration!  Not for long, because I'm taking the cat mugs to the Tailgate this weekend.
'
Have you checked out the "What's New?" tab for more of my recent work? It's right below the header picture.

Indoors or out...

As far as I can tell, this is one azalea bush...but with two color flowers on it.  Grafted?

I am so blessed, or lucky, whichever, to be living among such beauty!
But with the hot weather last week before the rain, all the outdoor blooms have now faded.  Glad I captured them while they were there!

A bowl is a bowl except when...

This Saturday is the first of our summer-long morning markets.  I'm not ready today.  But I will be in time to take my pots over to the Mud Buddies booth on Saturday.


I'm going to feature one pot each week that will be on display.  Come buy it if you like it! Say you saw it here and you'll have 10% discount!

I'm really looking forward to seeing all the other vendors, and our regular customers who love locally produced food and pottery.

It's perhaps early for a lot of the food products, but honey, jellies, baked goods, roasted nuts, meats, and early spring greens will be there.  And we have a regular booth where food is actually prepared to order and served hot.  That is just behind the Mud Buddies.

There go the trees!

April 23, 2016, a few leaves out on the tips of the branches, whether from bedroom (top photo) or living room.

April 26, and there are still some mountains through the branches!

This spring the Mourning Dove will not be the only one living in the treetops!

There's my balcony, and living room and bedroom windows! I've hastily removed the other pots from the railing and left Mama Dove the one in the middle where she's nesting.

As I mentioned on Facebook, he brought her twigs to build the next, but I haven't seen him for a few days, and she doesn't seem to leave at all, just shifts her view around.  I think the plant will probably not survive the nesting season without water, but it's a choice I readily make!  Baby birds!

Enjoy!

Going to a show

I'm submitting two works to a "Then and Now" exhibit at the Swannanoa Valley Fine Arts League.  They will be on display in the Red House location on State Street next to the Monte Vista Hotel (Black Mountain, NC). Link to them Here.

It's my first time having entries for one of their exhibits. The show runs from May 5-31.

THEN -
Goddess and Fairy Tree.

Long ago trees had stories about them, which included how fairies chose to live in them, and goddesses were seen beneath their bark. Their crowns of leaves were known as those of queens.

NOW -
Trio of Trees.

Trees choose where to grow, and who they will spend their lives standing next to, interweaving their branches together. Each leans on the other for strength.

Happy Beltaine (May Day)

I dreamed that I lost my phone.
All those contact phone numbers...gone.
And somehow I wasn't able to get the other electronic data from the computer.

I woke up determined to copy phone numbers and addresses into an old fashioned pen and paper book!

But I have many files of photos stored in this computer (and an external hard drive). So while I have them, let me share with you, a delightful Sunday morning in 2008, my first spring of retirement.

I did share these before, on Goddess in Clay blog, way back then.  But you probably haven't seen them since then.

Byron Ballard led a ritual including calling the 4 directions

Our Maypole was carefully tamped into the soil while we waited for the dance

Children and adults wove the ribbons around, and greeted each other with smiles

And there I was (far left) enjoying the ritual which I hadn't done since childhood myself!

Thanks for stopping by my blog.  Here's a quote for today:

To be alive in this beautiful, self-organizing universe -- to participate in the dance of life with senses to perceive it, lungs that breathe it, organs that draw nourishment from it -- is a wonder beyond words. Joanna Macy