Pottery!

I've been taking a wheel throwing class at the campus craft center and I took home my first finished pieces on Sunday! They are in order of creation. I love the white glaze on the inside of this first bowl.

This glaze was supposed to be the brown and green thats at the top. I think it got contaminated with the blue, but I like the way it turned out.

This is my accidental pitcher. I bumped the rim when I was taking it off the wheel so I made it into a pitcher.

This is a cute little bowl. The glaze is kinda weird- bubbly in some spots. Oh well, still functional :)

Last week we learned closed forms and I'm so addicted.

Squirrel Update

So my efforts at burying the fence were fruitless. I came back a couple days later and they had just gone under it. My new strategy is to scatter the remaining plants around the garden in hopes that the squirrels won't find all of them. So far they haven't found any. In the future I am going to line the beds of root crops with chicken wire. I did that for my tulip bulbs and it worked so hopefully it will work for more tempting things like the potatoes I planted this weekend.

Tulips and Sunset

I went out one night to try to take a picture of my tulips blooming, but they close in the evening. BUT I did get to see the most beautiful sunset!

 

And then I came out the next day to get the tulips at their best. They are a wonderful intro to spring!

 

Squirrels, gophers and rats

These are all pests I suspect to be frequenting my garden.  I'm not sure if I have squirrels or gophers or both, but there is definitely a tunneling mammal swiping my root crops.  So today I spent a back breaking afternoon in the garden burying the bottom 12'' of my fence.  Hopefully this will at least deter them.  One fellow gardener said that he had buried his 2 ft and the little boogers still mananged to get in.  I should at least win against the rats.  They live in the brush under the cactus right next to the back half of my plot.  I think they used to slip under the fence, but hopefully burying it helped. Unless they can climb. Or fit through the holes.. meh.

haha

moar humorous pics

Seedlings!

I have started seeds indoors!

So far I have peppers (orange and red), one tomato, marigolds, garlic chives and basil seedlings. Still waiting on the rest of the tomatoes, purple and hot peppers, poppies and calendula to come up. My system is kinda ghetto. I have Spongebob paper cups with dirt under two desklamps. Overall it seems to work pretty well. Two things for next year: 1. garden soil and potting soil are not the same- get the potting soil. 2. Paper cups rot- get plastic. This may not be a problem if I get sterile potting soil though. Anyway, here are the pics:

Its almost spring!

Things are starting to come alive out in the garden! The tulips are almost blooming:



The rosemary is blooming:


And the pansies finally decided to bloom after like 4 months:



And just for fun, a picture of my hanging planters that have baby spinach and lettuce plants in them!