10/8/24 I Continue to do Pottery

I'm low on inventory. I need to make more of everything. I need large pots for my unpotted bonsai trees. I also need variety. I recently made a dragon head, a large sea urchin pot, and some spider pots. I also had a large Cthulhu pot from last winter in Oregon Brown clay body that was recently completed. I have a few fish and some sea slugs. However, my sea urchin and spiders sold. I have to make more! I currently have a sea urchin and a couple spiders in the studio, waiting to be finished. To balance production/crafty work, I've challenged myself to produce two items daily (daily meaning 2-4 times a week): One a production pot, and a crafty work. 

Sudden thought to myself: 

Maybe I should do some older forms:

Rocket

Old man pants

Goofball stuff

I could include these in my crafty count.

Yeah. Let's have fun!

All for now

10/1/24 Update

 Update: I struck down the outdoor tropical growing area last night. All tropicals are now tucked away in their winter quarters. Initially I forgot my Brazilian Raintrees. Ran out in the middle of the night to retrieve them. I'm going to leave the Chinese elms outside. They should acclimate to the weather and will be fine. 

I continue to do pottery. I struck a bargain with Fairview Studio: I clean the studio on Wednesday mornings in exchange for my studio fees. I still have to pay for clay. 

I was planning on taking a few months off over the winter. Sales slow down and I can't afford the studio fees without the sales. I don't have to worry about that now! I do have a bit of pottery I must do. I have a bunch of pre-bonsai trees that need pots. Now I have all winter to work on that. 

I can also explore other shapes that take a while to make. I recently made Cthulhu pots, dragon heads, spider pots and sea urchins. These shapes are time-consuming. If I pace myself, I can do production work and more crafty shapes at once. 

All for now.

9/30/24 Shutting Down For the Season

I went to the Pumpkin Patch 9/28 for the last time. I meant to say for the season, but it may be the last time ever. There's talk about selling the Pumpkin Patch, so I don't know if it's coming back next year. If it does sell, I'll likely go to another venue(s). For shits, here's some pictures from Saturday:

That's a picture of how my space looked. Yes, I'm a bit stretched thin.

Just a bunch of pots here with my fish, sea slugs and dragon up top. 

This is mostly small pots. One beholder is still there. One goblin head is still there. My raku ware is there. Yes, I take Square! :)

My bonsai for sale. Did I mention I'm starting to get a bit stretched thin out here?

Second display with bonsai. I got some cute stuff. 

This is the if you know, you know section: Pre-bonsai material for creating your own finished bonsai. This stuff sells!

Alright, let's look at some of the stuff fresh out the kiln: 

I have this wacky-looking dragon. Wacky!

LOOOVE this glaze combination. I believe it's Floating Blue over Shorebreak. 

Great look on a sea urchin pot! It's okay if it's not your thing. This was sold fresh out of the kiln, so someone absolutely loved it. Paid more than I asked for it!

Small selection of pumpkins in different glazes. Hard to get the scale of these things!

 Here's a spider pot that I'm working on. Tiny clay pumpkin for scale. 

The weather is still warm during the day, but it's getting cool overnight. In anticipation of moving my tropicals indoors, I'm moving my vending supplies into winter storage. Down in the basement. I'm taking advantage of the move to clean up the craft room. I have so many projects that led to nowhere: 

bent pieces of wires here

odd rocks there 

It's getting to the point where I can no longer craft. I did what I had to do: 

I left the door to the craft room open. 

I invited my wife in to 'do her thing'. Meaning she cleaned: 

Tossed the side projects. 

Vacuumed. 

Cleaned up, organized, and put away the odd rocks and items of interest. 

It was brutal but had to be done. I will finally have room to craft without being hobbled by too many projects and distractions. 

WRONG!

The boys rediscovered my stash of Nintendo: N64, Game Cube, and Game Boys. They bought an old CRT TV/VCR to play the GC and N64. There's no other place to place it in the house so they set up shop in the craft room. The GC works fine; still have not tested the N64, but I doubt there's any issues with that thing; it's bulletproof. There's been some talk of purchasing a nicer chair for the 'retro station' as it's being called. 

I am glad to hear the craft room is being used by more now. Our next step is to strike down the outdoor tropical growing area and bring it indoors. I have more things to clear before that can happen, but it's gonna happen very soon. It has to. Winter is coming. 

9/4/24 What's All This Talk About End of the Season?

Last weekend was Labor Day. Glorious day, glorious weather. Sun was out, and everybody and their brother was out (I think) at the lake. Had to be, cause they weren't at the Pumpkin Patch!

Ha! What do I care? I'm just there to kick rocks and chew bubble gum. And I'm all out of bubble gum. Or something or another. 

These pictures are just random pictures I took at the Pumpkin Patch this year. They're not even from this week, necessarily.

Just for randomness, here's some pictures from this year:

That's a picture of a trident maple in a weird little broken egg with feet pot I made. Such a cute little weirdo!

Frogs, frogs, everywhere there's frogs. I dunno, I like this shit!

Frog bonsai pot. Sure wish this blog would let me post updated pictures like a normal place would. 

More crazy pots. I know, right: crazy!

Allo! My name is Inigo Montoya! You keel my fadder. Prepare to die. No, just a repost of an old pic to remind myself that I should drastically prune my tropicals.

That's pretty sick! Sea slug in raku glazes. Love this piece. Was done about what, 15 years ago?

Not sure if this last picture will be accepted, but it's a GIF of a long-spined sea urchin.

I don't have much to say this time around. I just dropped off some pottery at Lost Mountain; that may be done next week. I just restarted my monthly membership at Fairview, so I'll be busy dropping off pottery there.

I have some other pictures that I'd like to post, but blogger is being weird today. Oh well. 

All for now. 

First Wholesale Order Delivered

I ordered the following items wholesale:

10 Chinese elms

10 Tiger bark Ficus

2 Exposed root Pemna

2 Brazilian Rain Tree

Ordered on Monday, arrived on Saturday. 

Looks like the raintrees dropped some leaves, but they're healthy. Everything else arrived in tip top shape. We spent Saturday unboxing, unwrapping, prepping benches and setting up the trees. 

Don't know when these will be available for sale. They're going to be pricey. 

My first set of concrete molds arrived. These are the Chibi Buddhas in 3 poses. I should be getting the Lucky Frog cement molds this week. Not sure when I'll get my snail cement mold. 

I just wanted to document date of first wholesale delivery. Pictures maybe later.

All for now.

The Dig, One Year Update

Last year, I posted about a dig (7/24/23)

It's been about year, thought I'd do an update how everything is doing: 

Sargent crabapples (Malus sargentii)

I'm not sure how many I got; there may have been as many as 60. A few that did not survive, but for the most part, these are doing great. I currently have about 50. Initially, I threw them into grow bags, putting them into 3-gallon nursery pots in the fall. Some of the first trees did not include enough soil. These were likely the ones that didn't survive. By the fall of last year, the growth was way out of hand, so I pruned them all severely. They grew back and as a whole are likely going to get another severe pruning in the fall. Next spring I'm planning some root pruning. That means more root cuttings.

Dwarf blueberry

These were doing very well. I decided to prune back all the growth about a month ago. A bit late in the season. The growth has not returned - it may be that I killed them. Time will tell.

Sango Kaku Japanese maple (Acer palmatum)

The Japanese maples are doing very good. I haven't done much with them, just letting them grow wild. Eventually, I want to start some air layers. 

Mugo Pine (Pinus mugo)

These guys look fantastic! Mugo pines always look great. 

Kojo-No-Mai Japanese Mt Fuji Cherry (Prunus incisa) 

I have two. One is short and thick. The other is tall and thin. I'm calling the short, thick one Pietra, meaning rock. I'll refer to the tall one Paula, cause that sorta sounds like palo. I snapped off some dead branches. Other than that, I'm leaving Paula alone for now. No root work, no top pruning. I'm just trying to make sure she's going to be okay. 

Pietra on the other hand has been worked. I root pruned and was able to get some root cuttings as well as a couple of suckers that took. In the spring, Pietra did throw out some flowers. I removed most of them, to avoid exhausting the tree with flower production. 

Japanese black Pine

Nope! None made it. The stress was too much and they've pooped out. Oh well.

Gingko Biloba

The only one that made it was the one I gifted to Aaron. The others just never woke up. 

All for now

End of Month Update 6/25/24

Summer's here and I'm busy. I've been doing pottery at Fairview. Wilderbee has my winter work mostly bisque fired. This is the Oregon Brown clay body. I have Lost Mountain pottery firing a few brown body pieces. I have pottery coming out my nose! I'm going to bow out of Fairview for the summer; it's just too much! I'll likely come back in the fall once things settle back down.

Regarding Bonsai: 

I've been watering and feeding heavy, trying to capitolize on the long summer days. The weeds have LOVED this! It's like I'm growing wheat, some of the weeds have reached 3 feet tall. I don't have time for weeding, but I don't like the idea of my bonsai being strangled by weeds, so I leaned into weeding Saturday night. This was after going out to the flea market. Did some more weeding on Saturday. Reconnected with my shimpaku juniper that was hidden in the weeds as well as a couple other trees. 

The vine maples are doing very well overall. A few never woke up, so those must have been duds. They seem to enjoy the high water and fertilizer. They're getting partial shade and some of the leaves are turning dark red. Seems it was a good call, getting the vine maples.

I tried some root cuttings from the vine maples.I'm not sure if  they took. I've taken root cuttings from almost everything I've encountered. Some rooting cuttings take, others just crap out. Some of my root cuttings were very haphazard, meaning they ended up getting mixed with some soil while I was trimming roots. I just threw some cuttings in a bucket with dirt and see if it works. For the most part, this isn't working. But then again, some does take. Confirmed root cuttings I have Chinese elm, kojo no mai Fuji cherry, sargent crabapple. 

All I have for now. Pictures later (maybe).