Pots and Cuttings

I took up pottery at Desert Dragon Pottery, where I've been under Mishy's tutelage. I like her teaching style; she will give subtle hints and uses the carrot approach, versus the heavy club. What I mean is that she allows the student to dictate the tempo of the teachings. She wanted to show me how to throw clay on the wheel, but I told her that I wasn't quite ready, maybe we could do that next month. We then moved on to something else. I've been making Mame pots. Lots of different Mame pots, most with feet. The pots are mostly the same styles, as I'm trying to get the techniques down. I've also made a few larger bonsai sized pots. They're not the typical bonsai pots. I definitely have my own style and these larger pots are in my own style as well.

I don't have pictures of my pots. I just don't have the time for pictures. It's such a big deal. You have to set up the shot and make sure you have good lighting. Then you have to download from your camera, edit, crop the shot, then upload to your online photo album. Once you do that, then you can start to share. But yeah, whatever... what was I talking about? My mame pots- I feel silly talking about them without pictures. *rehash picture statement* Honestly, the reason I don't have pictures is I currently do not have any finished pots. I have a bunch that are in the kiln at the moment. I plan to swing by Mishy's tonight after work to drop off/pick up a number of pots. Who knows, I might have some pictures later.

My pomegranates are on their second growing year. They're still quite small. I've been giving lots of fertilizer, so I'm seeing lots of new growth in everything, especially the seedlings. I've started to train some of the pomegranates. My main focus is on the trunk structure and giving lots of movement. I've been using chopsticks and tie wire for the initial training. The pomegranates are growing so fast that I have to check the wires often to avoid cutting in on the bark. And by 'checking often' I mean checking at least once a week and actually *seeing* a difference. It's very rewarding to be working with the pomegranate seedlings. They're lots of fun and you can see the payoff on your hard work in a short time. What kills me is that these are seedlings. They'll only get better with age!

There's a number of pine, maple, and even a couple crabapple first year seedlings. First year seedlings are so small, but they will grow. Time passes, whether we plant seedlings or not. Some of these seedlings might be ready for planting as Mame next year. While I wait for the seedlings to grow into their own, I will be ordering older seedlings in the fall. Time does pass, and I grow older with each passing season.

I took a number of ficus cuttings a few weeks ago. Maybe it was a couple weeks ago, sometimes it's difficult to gauge time on the short scale and the weeks meld into the months. The ficus cuttings were taken from my bonsai as I did some maintenance pruning. I noticed some branches were taking away from the overall design of the bonsai, so I also took some larger cuttings. The cuttings are doing fairly well. I'm not seeing much in the ways of new growth, but I'm not seeing any die back, either. That leads me to believe that the cuttings are working on putting out new roots.

I took the opportunity to plant some cuttings when I did some training on my bougainvilleas. I've never tried bougainvilea The hardwood cuttings from the bougie that I bought from Lowe's a couple weeks ago have mostly dried up. There's still one that has some green, so I'm holding out hope. I was able to take one root cutting from that bougie. No sign of life from that root cutting, but it doesn't look dead per se. I took a couple cuttings a few days ago of a bougie that I found in Walmart; these cuttings I placed in water. I'm getting mixed results. One cutting was very long (about 12 inches) and is now wilting. Another cutting was medium (about 6 inches) and looks pretty good.