A walk in the woods.

Today we went for a walk in the “woods.”
Well truth be told we drove up to the back part of the farm and then took the walk through the woods.
I use the term loosely because for the past several weeks the woods next to us have been under siege.

We have noticed a lot of the woods around us being cut.
Times are hard and folks need money. When this happens they turn to the trees and even though the price is way down they go ahead and cut.
The people who own this land, by the time it was all over, maybe cleared 5,000.00





There is a creek, which feeds our pond, right in the middle of this clear cut. Mark went over and talked with the guy in charge of the crew. He was kind enough to do as little cutting as possible at the creek.
We walked it today and all things considered it seems in good shape.

It always breaks my heart to see large tracks of land cut. It looks like the end of the world.
The only good part here is the person who owns the land plans to replant.
I am keeping my fingers crossed he does.
Of course the plant will be pines, so gone will be the big oaks and other hard woods.



On another note we found a nice cool spot where ferns are growing.
















But I worry a bit about this large grove of running cedar.
It might be too exposed to the amount of sun it is now taking in.




I’ll have to walk back there this fall to see if it makes it through the summer.

Have we been here before?

Back in 1981-1982 we built our first kiln. It was all hard brick and ate gas like a pig. We decided we needed a soft brick kiln for two reasons. One it needed to fire more efficiently and two we wanted to get more pots out at a time- production was the name of the game for us then.
So we built the big kiln- 1986.
Now it is 2009 and I don't know here the years went.
But we have dug out pictures of the first kiln we built and Mark has been reproducing it in soft brick.


Mark, being the great pack rat that he is, had stored the steel away in one of the out buildings.

He is now reproducing an arch,that is long gone, and cleaning burners.

Our thoughts on this kiln are, we will be able to fire more glaze test along with smaller turn around of the old glazes.
The large kiln does not allow quick turn around.
And- the work and we have changed. When I look at filling the old kiln I have to take a breath.
In fact I take that breath today- 80 cubic feet is a lot of pottery.
The small kiln is about 20 cubic feet. A baby compared to the big bad boy!


We hope to have this baby out for a test drive in the next month.

July 9th- Happy New Year!

If you have been following our Blog you know that last year on July the 8Th we lost our work studio to fire.
Yesterday I had planned to post just to mark the passing of the year.
There were several ways I thought about how to post and then the day and night got completely away from me.
As I was going to bed around midnight I thought, " life has returned to normal." There was no time to sit and reflect on the fire of last year.
The time of the fire came and went and we were busy.
Busy glazing.
Busy with customers.
Busy loading a kiln.
Busy building the new kiln.
Busy with the garden.
Busy with family and friends...
It was a hard walk last year, but guess what, we did it and life has resumed.
I like it.

A quick trip over the fourth-

Chirp, chirp, twitter, twitter..........insert birds calls here--- it's 4 am and birds don't sleep in the city like they do at my house.
Beep, beep, beep...bam, bam, bam...insert the sounds of a big construction crew building a big parking garage here.......it's 5 am and they are fast at work.
I took the sleep mask, I took the ear plugs........
Oh- the fire engine just went out and an ambulance is coming in.
Insert those here it's 5:45 am.....

Sigh- yes we are spoiled and if we did live her I think we would adjust to the noise.
But sleeping in the city has become a challenge for me.

It never gets dark in cities and cities never sleep.
We made a quick trip over to see the son's new house over the 4Th.

Then up to see my mother and Penny the cat.
Who, as you can see, is still living the high life and taking her daily rides with Mom back and forth throughout the house.




The weekend, despite some rain, was very pleasant.
Being July you can not always say that about Norfolk. It can be hot and muggy.
We left today and it was still a wonderful cool morning.
The view down the block.


Don't you want to live here?

I love the area of Norfolk- near downtown. The houses are old turn of the century mixed with some new and old apartment buildings. The apartment's, gone condo now, are as big as some houses I have been in. High ceilings, big rooms,beautiful woodwork, large windows, and tree lined streets.
One of those "walking neighborhoods."



But we hit the road home















Stopped for lunch.

And now we are thinking about going to work tomorrow!
But first- I am going to sleep in my own bed while I listen to the crickets and frogs.... my birds get up about 6am and that is okay by me!