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Brad's Blog
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We have friends visiting, who always stop on their way to their relatives in Seattle. We always stop at their house on our way to relatives in Minnesota, so it makes for a nice symmetry. But guests means I'm too busy to start taking pictures (which I'd like to do) or reflect deeply for this journal. We had the most fun playing the word game where you make up likely (or extremely bogus sounding) definitions for wildly unusual words (like "plonk" which is British slang for cheap wine). I've also got to fit in glazing a kiln load of pots for a wholesale order, and get started making donuts. It's good to be busy.
July 2, 2005
I just got enough time today to visit our lake with my new camera, so here's a sample:
July 3 addendum: Someone else guessed a Common Goldeneye,
but the web says they're more eastern birds, so I'm sticking with this
for now. P.S. The birders are divided, but all agree they're
goldeneyes. You can see that in the picture...
July 3, 2005
For good reason one doesn't hear the
expression "sitting in the catbird seat," much anymore, as it evokes no
useful image to most. I seem to recall a James Thurber short story
which refers to it, possibly with that name... Here's
a link explaining Thurber was the first to use it in print, based on
the colorful play by play announcing of Red Barber, and saying that the
origin is the catbird assuming the highest branch to sing from.
Here's a catbird image, taken with the new camera:
July 4, 2005
So here I am in the moose costume,
playing Grateful Dead songs on the banjo in the 4th of July parade, leading
the motorized kids division, or trailing the walking division, depending
on your spin. My son's girl friend Susa made the costume for him,
and I was pleased to fit in it. I spent about a half hour after that
backing and harmonizing with The Good News Singers from our local church
at the Old Fashioned 4th celebration in the Park. Later we watched
the local 15 minutes of fireworks, and returned to our house to light about
a third of the fireworks I'd won last weekend (another third we'll use
on Epiphany, and the last third we'll save for next year).
I was chatting to a grocery clerk
at our grocery store about winning the big packet of fireworks, and the
person in line in front of me said he'd won the same deal from Rathdrum
(our nearest neighboring town), and lit them all off on the third (fireworks
is a multiday event here usually, but especially this year with the 4th
on a Monday).
The local fireworks display is worth
commenting on. The locals crowd in to one of the town ballparks at
dusk. Then there's a potluck of locals doing their fireworks right
in the audience, versus the surrounding houses that are launching the mortar
type ones, sort of goading the "professionals" to get going. Most
times there is a fireline--this time we didn't see any (it was getting
dark), and ended up closest of anyone to the display. As a result
the display would often go off directly over us. Small town displays
are not, I'm sure, as impressive as the big urban ones, but the closeness
of the viewing plus the ease of leaving without traffic jams makes up for
a lot in the experience.
When our kids were little, we would
light off the fireworks while they watched. Somehow the table's turned,
and now we are the spectators. A tradition has evolved with our sons,
of doctoring up some of the fireworks with other materials, including gunpowder,
extra small fireworks, and the like. It adds an element of unpredictability.
The home fireworks otherwise might pall in comparison with the big show.
The excitement level also stays higher from the closeness of the spectators
(10 feet or so), occasionally requiring deft movement to avoid glowing
spinning things.
July 5, 2005
July 6, 2005
A quiet day, so here's one of the pictures I got with the telescopic lens on my new camera (12X magnification), Panasonic Lumix FZ20PP:
July 7, 2005
As a child I would help a bit in my
father's garden, where sometimes tomatoes would sprout from last year's
crop. He told me they were volunteers, and would let them grow, but
from their late start they seldom produced anything. Also at our
lake cabin we would spit the seeds of watermelon (now becoming an archaic
idea with the prevalence of the seedless varieties) off the balcony onto
the steep side hill, and volunteer watermelons would have a run at reproducing,
but invariably fail.
In order to maximize space in the
garden, I sometimes interplant a late crop like corn with an early crop
like spinach. Now that I have two gardens, the space usage isn't
so critical, but I still sometimes do it anyway. Currently my earliest
spinach is starting to flower. Most gardeners pull it up at this
point, as it looks irritating to the organized mind. But I like to
leave a row or so for seed. I collect seeds from spinach, peas, and
green beans (the last two of which are self pollinated, and all of which
are not hybridized).
When weeding and thinning, I have
a weakness for volunteer flowers, and leave them to add to the mix of the
late summer garden. So where the greens grew, cosmos and poppies
are coming along to fill the gap. By leaving them to flower, I guarantee
their continued presence as volunteers the next year.
A side note: although my father was
not an organic gardener, from my earliest memories he was a firm believer
in compost, and had different systems every place he lived. I've
found, like him, that it's easier to add compost to a bin than to remove
it...
July 8-10, 2005
They say you can never go home again, and that's true, because there's usually someone else living in your old domicile. But you can visit, which is what we've been doing, for the 100th anniversary of a church my wife Althea was the pastor of, until a couple years ago, in central Idaho. It was also the 5th anniversary of my son Forrest's high school graduation, so we went the day before for "Prairie Days," a day of small town celebration. We learned that only 10 year anniversaries are recognized with a class float, but he saw several from his class, as well as other friends from school. The class of 1975 had the distinction of wettest float, as their children or grandchildren (in a long tradition) pelted them with water balloons , to which the parents responded in kind.
Both wildlife (such as deer and elk) and wildflowers survive on the fringes, such as in this spectacular canyon (off the Central Ridge Road)
July 11, 2005
Every gardener hates to leave home
during the growing season. When I left for the weekend, there was
only a small handful of ripe raspberries. When I picked them today,
there was about 6 pints. The first zucchini and tomato are ripe,
ahead of the peas for the first time. You should never leave a garden
when the zucchini hits its stride, or you'll be plagued with giant zucchini,
which seem a shame to waste, but no one really wants them (link
to my zucchini poem).
July 12, 2005
I glazed two
kiln loads today, worked on a beginner's pottery video with my sons, and
played music tonight at a jam in Spokane. Besides that it was a beautiful
day, but I was only out in it for about a mile walk taking photographs
in downtown Spokane. When I got home I found I'd smudged the lens, so they
were mostly disappointing. I noticed I'd hit the 500 mark for photos
on the new camera--probably more shots in two weeks then I took with film
cameras in 5 years...
July 13, 2005
I picked the first cucumber today,
and raspberry picking has become a daily necessity. It's too bad
it all happens at once in the summer--swimming weather, garden work, and
free concerts in parks. There are a couple good free concerts in
Spokane this weekend--folk music at the Fox Theater, and the Spokane Symphony
in the park. But instead I'll be playing music on Saturday at a Spokane
garden show (when I suppose I really should be picking raspberries and
selling pots). It's nice to have good things to choose from.
July 15, 2005
To
illustrate the things one does to be a professional potter, today I:
Made handles for some pitchers
and trimmed some French Butter Dishes, from yesterday.
Unloaded a bisque kiln, got a call
that my clay order was in, and drove 70 miles round trip to get it , including
hand loading the 3000 lbs onto the van and trailer.
With help of my sons, unloaded
the 3000 lbs into the pottery workshop (partially using an old red wagon
to haul it 200 lbs at a time). Some of the clay goes down into the
root cellar under the workshop, as there isn't room in the shop.
Then I poured some scrap glaze
into a mysterious failure batch of crystalline glaze, hoping the glop I
added would make it all smooth out into something salvageable, instead
of a $30 mistake. I made one small tile of this to stick in the next
kiln firing.
I then glazed enough pots for two
kiln firings, while (with the help of my sons) waiting on customers.
Originally I thought I was going
to drive 40 miles the other direction to take down an exhibit at the Post
Falls library, but one of the pottery guild members saved me the drive
by taking them home.
Speaking of the pottery guild,
I volunteered to make them a webpage, which process I started yesterday.
Meanwhile, my wife took the car
to be serviced (we drive a lot--it was a few thousand miles past oil change
time).
Aside from pottery, there was the
hour I spent picking raspberries this morning, and the overnight guests
we have for tonight.
Summer is a busy time.
July 16, 2005
The guests included a surprise young
relative of theirs, who had gone to Seattle to see the Chieftains, his
and my favorite Irish band. It was clear from the start we had a
lot in common. Unfortunately there was little time on the schedule to get
to know each other musically, so I loaded him up with my musical CD's and
some Grateful Dead concerts.
The Musicians Anonymous had a very
fine time playing music in a beautiful garden in Spokane Valley today.
In the frenetic atmosphere of a folk festival we can be overlooked, but
this was a good setting for our quiet and thoughtful old-time music.
And the best thing was, the downpour didn't start till 5 minutes after
we quit...
This afternoon I spent a good deal
of time picking spinach and parboiling it in preparation for freezing.
The last lump I saved out to make quiche with. I also made some huckleberry
muffins to use up some of last year's huckleberries. Sometime in
the last week I defrosted both our fridge and freezer, in anticipation
of starting to fill it with garden produce.
On another front, I began work in
earnest on the website for the local clay hobby group I belong to.
It will be up soon on the web, at the address http://www.cagni.org (for
Clay Arts Guild of North Idaho).
July 17, 2005
Being so busy lately has caused me
to reflect that busy people are seldom reflective. It explains why
our presidents are like they are.
I would have thought more about it but I'm too busy.
So that's it for reflection.
My wife is organizing a block party
next week, pointing out that it's good to know who your neighbors are.
Forrest responded, saying, that way you can know which neighbors you'd
want to have watching your property, and which neighbors you'd want to
watch when they're on your property...
The cagni.org website is now
up.
July 18, 2005
It was swimming weather today. I've been trying to swim in
the lake daily (it's something, like fresh cherries, you don't get to experience
most of the year). I bring along my new camera, hoping for wildlife,
but it's been pretty boring. Until today. I finished swimming,
and was about to leave when a female duck came in quick and quacking.
That's passe, but I'd never seen a group of ducklings come out of the rushes
at the sound of her quack before, which they did today. So I tried
to take a picture of her and her 5 ducklings. After that I looked
up and saw an osprey circling on thermals at the end of the mill pond,
and began trying to photograph it. It plunged in the pond and caught
a fish.
Here it is lifting the fish out of
the water.
Then 3 seagulls mobbed the osprey,
their typical tactic to make other birds (generally other seagulls) drop
the food so they can get it. The osprey managed to elude the seagulls,
but while about 100 feet in the air, ended up dropping the fish anyway,
which made a very loud plop when it hit. The osprey continued on,
apparently assuming that fish was long gone, although a later photo showed
it (and its mate) apparently holding a fish, so maybe I just missed the
retrieval while photographing. I took a lot of other pictures, but
moving birds are challenging to focus on and shoot, so most were not so
vivid as this one.
It's an amazing corollary of the Heisenberg
uncertainty principle, that you can't both experience something and photograph
it at the same time. So you have to pick and choose as a photographer
which you'd rather do. I've seen osprey diving at fish quite a few
times, so I'm happy I opted to photograph this one instead of just watching
it.
But it reminds me of when I had a
summer pottery intern, whose mother was passing through and wanted to visit.
She entered with a video camera to her eye, and kept it going while
getting a tour of the house, down to our unique bathroom with handpainted
tiles in the shower. My recollection is that she was only there while
videotaping, but I may have colored the experience with time...
July 19, 2005
I set out to hunt marmot today. My son's girlfriend is coming to visit tomorrow, and enjoys wildlife. This spring I visited the Finch Arboretum in Spokane and found a lot of marmots running around. Marmots are basically the same as woodchucks and groundhogs. This particular one is a yellowbellied marmot. Although living a block from the internet in the city of Spokane (and all along the Spokane river, including the most urban sector downtown, where I've seen them frequenting dumpsters), they are still wild, fairly shy, retaining millennia of caution. I found a pair back in the dark rocky corner of the park, and the pictures came out a bit blurred. Then as I drove away, one went scampering by on the sidewalk at the entrance. So here's a marmot picture from today:
July 20, 2005
I have a friend
who juggles. He started on his own, and began teaching the kids in
elementary class he taught. He taught his own kids to juggle.
He started a youth juggling group. He took them on the road to national
juggling competitions. He started a local juggling convention.
Each step is like adding a ball when juggling--it gets harder to keep them
all in the air.
Summer is like
that. Once the raspberries start, if you go more than two days they
turn dark and don't taste as good. Today was the first day we had
enough peas to shell and cook, and not just snack on in the pod.
I let the second cutting of the little broccoli florets get too old, so
I had to pick them off. The rain, which has been generous so far
this year, now must be supplemented by sprinklers, which means moving them
regularly. My son's girl friend has arrived for a couple week visit.
Lots of balls in the air.
My friend who
juggles has started to cut back, from overcommitment. He doesn't
run the youth juggling group. He thinks the upcoming juggling festival
may be the last. The good juggler knows how many balls he can sustainably
juggle. If he can fit it in, though, my friend likes to come here
when the raspberries are ripe and pig out. That's something you can
only do in summer.
Anyway, I must
not have enough balls in the air yet, as I've time to philosophize.
While baking granola.
July 21, 2005
Since
my son's girlfriend is visiting, I thought it might be fun to take a little
river canoe ride. Growing up in Iowa, it was the best chance to see the
natural remnants, with the farmland mostly out of sight over the bank.
I'd heard that the Spokane River was Class I (beginner) from Corbin Park
to the Washington border, but drove there in advance today to check the
put ins and take outs. The river itself is lovely, a clear deep green
carving through rocks and gravel banks. But the river is lined with
houses, and the drive to the takeout point takes you through the village
State Line, which is mostly a tawdry strip mall (with the emphasis on "strip").
It grew there when Idaho had a lower drinking age than Washington.
Anyway, the setting spoiled the potential experience for me.
It also reminded
me that nature photographers get good at lying--catching the caged
jaguar in the little patch of natural foliage to make it look wild, or
leaving the junked auto out of the mountain meadow picture.
Of course it's
not just photographers. I was at a pioneer crafts show once, eating
fry bread at a native taco stand, that had some native drumming on a CD
playing to supply a bit of atmosphere. There was someone there with
a microphone interviewing the owner about something. Later I heard
the same interview on NPR, where one would assume there was live drumming
in the background.
Both of these
are sort of white lies--they don't hurt anyone...
When I told
my wife I didn't like the setting, she suggested canoeing the South Fork
of the Coeur D' Alene river. There everything appears pristine and
lush. Unfortunately the whole basin is a superfund site, from years of
mining waste depositing lead and other heavy metals in the sediments.
It makes a pretty picture, as you can see on my North Idaho
webpage, but it hides a black lie...
July 22, 2005
Today
I glazed two kiln loads, after trimming yesterday's pots. In a good week
I spend parts of three days throwing pots, about the same time assembling
and trimming the pots, and two days glazing. I can average two bisque
firings per week, and about 3 glaze firings, all in my 7 foot electric
kiln. One of the hard things to do is to figure out which pots to make
to fill a kiln efficiently. You have to think in terms of both height
and diameter. I had made a lot of bowls, many of which would sit
inside each other for the bisque firing. Bowls are sort of space
hogs in the glaze firing--you can often get only 3 on a shelf which would
hold 20 or more mugs or other more cylindrical pots. So I made over
100 mini pots, about an inch and a half each in size, figuring they would
fill the spaces for two glaze firings. I nearly got all of the minipots
in the first kiln I loaded, which means I wasted some space on the second
kiln, lacking kiln fillers. It's not a big deal, just means a slightly
less efficient firing. If you can squeeze one extra small pot in
a firing, it can sometimes pay for the firing...
July 23, 2005
This
was the day of the block party. It was the first party we've thrown
in memory. We are not big party people. Anything resembling a party
was usually for some church event. But our neighbor (who also never
throws parties) suggested we have a block party at our new house, so we
did. I determined my role would be to get my Musician Anonymous buddies
to come so I wouldn't have to talk to people. So we had a nice time
jamming, occasionally taking requests. There were about 25 people
total at the party, which lasted from 5 to about 8:30, which was about
right, considering no alcohol was served. At the end it seemed possible
to have another block party next year. Got the party thing out of the way
for a while, anyway.
July 26, 2005
The pots are
flowing out much faster than they can be replenished now, so it's about
the peak of summer. Seems to be coinciding with the first real heat wave...
If only I could have known what I'd be running out of now, I'd have made
more in April. (I'd hate to try to say that sentence in a foreign
language) Busy-ness (as well as business) is now the norm, so I'm
lagging a bit on this journal. The most notable event today was making
it to the bank with a deposit, just before they closed at 6. This
may seem unimportant, but our nearest bank branch is 25 miles away, so
every trip counts. Both the city and rural highways are going full
bore on their construction traffic delays--I guess it's paired sort of
like snow and Christmas--having long delays when the temperatures are most
prone to overheat your car.
July 27, 2005
I went on a Wild Google Chase today.
Although I'm so busy, I agreed to lead a small canoe trip including my
son's visiting girl friend. I decided on the Pend Oreille River,
as I figured it's one river that doesn't run dry this time of year (because
of a series of hydro dams). Google's new map/satellite view service led
me to think it was about 10 miles from Newport, Washington, to the first
bridge across the river. It wasn't that the program told me the mileage--although
it would have if I'd known the address of the bridge. But the little
scale of miles on their map misled me. Anyway it was 16 miles to
the next bridge. Fortunately I was driving the route to check on
put in and take out points, not canoeing for 16 miles. So I crossed
the river and checked for closer places to take out. Results Saturday.
People were buying pots by the hundred dollar lots today.
July 28, 2005
July 29, 2005
As if things weren't busy enough,
the green beans are coming in. Fortunately the raspberry season is
dropping off. I spent 3 hours today picking green beans in the 90
degree heat and parboiling them to get ready to freeze. We always
have way too many green beans, thanks to the variety, aptly named Provider.
Once the freezer is full, we give them away to friends and the food bank.
So while delirious in the sun, it occurred to me to try and sell some to
the pottery customers. Actually I've tried this before with zucchini,
and ended up just putting "free zucchini" on the sign. Green beans
are slightly more desirable, apparently, as I sold $1.50 worth today.
Last summer the city of Spirit Lake
began actually monitoring water use, and charging for use above a certain
amount deemed necessary for personal use. I fretted about this a
lot last summer, as our new house has 3 lots, including the large garden
and orchard. Actually, reviewing the bills, we apparently never went
over the base amount, but I was still in utility shock from tripling my
local utility bill when we bought our new house. So in my quest for
mental and financial balance, it would be nice for the garden to pay for
itself.
Thinking that way is, unfortunately,
a convoluting mess. I don't know if a garden ever really pays for
itself, if you count the work you spend on it, the manure, the seeds.
But I did put up 18 pints of organic green beans today, adding to the many
pints of raspberries in the freezer. Regardless of the economics,
getting a small financial return works psychologically for me to feel better
about watering the place, and not worrying about the total water usage.
July 30, 2005
A red letter day today, for sure.
I glazed and fired a kilnload, sang and played banjo in a gospel group
at the park, went canoeing for the first time on the Pend Oreille River,
and saw Riders in the Sky, the fine old-time western group in a free outdoor
concert in Liberty Lake.
July 31, 2005
Since one must make hay when the sun
shines, my wife and I ended up cleaning the hundreds of pots in our indoor
and outdoor displays today, and refinishing the display shelves.
This, more than washing the car, guarantees that the 30 percent chance
of rain tomorrow will be a dust storm followed by a smattering splattering
of raindrops which will tar and feather the nice clean pots. Tune
in tomorrow for the results.
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