bodner046

I have been a terrible blogger this year. Jeff and I continue to make pots, cook great meals, and work on our gardens, but blogging seems to have been put on the back burner. I keep waiting for that spark that will ignite the flame for me to get back to writing. Escargot Begonia Hibiscus - I bought this in the Spring. It was my mother's favorite flower. Lately I have been dreaming about Mum three or four nights a week. We finally had some tractor work done in the back lot and burned a lot of brush. Our garden looks a little scrappy, but we will work it some each year to make it more attractive. In the end it's the veggies we produce that really matter. Arroz Borracho con Pollo (drunken chicken with rice) and chile rellenos with salsa rojas Sorry for the out of focus photo! I recently spent a Sunday afternoon icing a very swollen, bee stung hand. Since I was incapacitated I watched a couple of cooking shows on PBS. I really enjoyed Pati's Mexican Table and decided that as so...

These are my favorites out of all the boxes. Particularly the one on the left. The ash glaze was sprayed on and it worked well with the blue slip. This one is also among my favorites, except for the fact that I knocked the edge of the rim off while getting it ready to load in the bisque kiln. I was going to scrap it, but Jeff sanded the broken area down. I guess now I get to keep it for myself. I liked this one a lot... and then I took the lid off! The crack goes all the way through. My guess is that I left some water inside when I closed in the form. As you may remember, these were made in one piece. This one is my least favorite. It just doesn't do anything for me. I guess there are bound to be clunkers every so often!

I promised a blog post about my small jars when they came out of the kiln, but I am going to wait until the last couple come out of glaze firing we did this weekend. In the meantime in between making pots, we have been spending many evenings working on our yard and gardens. We have been have a problem with bugs eating our basil and the leaves of our cone flowers. We spray with an all natural bug repellent and have had mixed results. I decided that what we needed were praying mantis!   I ordered a habitat cub that came with to mantis pods. The cup is filled with a straw like material and the pods rest on top of it. We kept them on the peninsula in the kitchen where we could check on them a few times a day. One pod hatched on Saturday afternoon, nineteens days after they were delivered. It's hard to see, but inside that cup are at least a hundred baby praying mantis. You have to release them within a day of hatching or they will start to eat each other. We put half on our flower...