Holy crap I'm feeling lazy!

I didn't do *anything* with my clay. I did a bunch of glazing on my dragon pieces, but I didn't create new pieces.

Okay, me being lazy is not entirely true true. I posted four new pots to my Etsy account, so that counts as having done something with my pottery, right? I still have a bunch of pots that I need to post, but I'm rolling out a few at a time now. I figure it's better that way, as listings will show better that way. Hey, if you really want to see my newest pots, even before I put them on my Etsy shop, you could always drop an e-mail on me.

I counted all my Adenium seedlings; I have about 105 potted up, altogether. There's another thirty or fourty seedlings in the tray, waiting to be potted up. I thought about taking some pictures of them as they sprout, but decided that they look too much like bean sprouts to be photographed. No, not really impressive, unless you like bean sprouts.

It got to over 112 today. To the uninitiated, that sounds hot. 'But it's a dry heat' is what I keep hearing. Don't get me wrong, that is still hot no matter how you slice it, it's just that it's easier to take this heat with low humidity, versus being stifled with high humidity AND excessive heat.

Anyhoots, looked in on my ficus cuttings. They're growing like weeds. I wired up a few more while I was out there. The F. Microcarpa cuttings are growing faster than the F. retusa, but the retusas have smaller leaves and IMHO look more interesting.

I've been using Miracle Grow on all my trees. I've simply been following the package instructions, feeding once a week. I've been very lucky in that I'm not getting hit too badly by bugs. Maybe it's because when I see aphids, I knock them off individually with jets of water whenever possible. I keep my eyes open for weeds and manually pull them if I see any. I do my best to keep my garden area free of freeloaders while trying hard not to poison the good guys.

The good guys in my garden are the fence swift, the assassin bug, the lacewing, the spider. I love all of them! Aaron enjoys catching the occassional bug, but I ask him to treat them all with respect and regard. He likes to keep bugs for a day or two, then he'll release it. A few weeks ago he caught this HUGE grasshopper. Now I'm sure it was only about 3-4 inches long, but I swear it looked a lot bigger. When Aaron released it, it hopped into the air and flew off. It's wingspan was about the size of a small bird, and it flew around for a while before flying off over the canal. He caught a juvenile preying mantis and asked to keep it until it grew to adult size. It looks like a regular Chinese preying mantis, so I let him keep it. He hunts beetles and other bugs to feed his mantis. He understands that his mantis needs to eat, but at the same time he treats the little bugs with about as much respect as you can expect to treat a soon to be meal.