• No, Paige, No! Not Again!

    You don’t know how it pains me to bring up this topic again… but for the sake of fairness and honesty, I can’t pretend that everything is just fine. I like to share how I take the bull by the horns and give him a run for his money, but this time the bull’s chasing me, and I think I might be wearing a curly wig and huge clown shoes that are seriously tripping me up. That’s right, here we…

  • Class Update

    My Wednesday night class with Julie Olson has been getting my creative juices flowing and reminding me of tricks of the craft. So far, getting back into throwing is not unlike getting back on a bike after not riding for awhile. My hands seem to know what to do, and I love it. Julie has demonstrated three-pull cylinders, handles, mixing bowls, batter bowls, pasta bowls and plates. My favorite has been the wide-rimmed pasta bowls. It makes so much sense…

  • Three Months Healed

    At the passing of each month, I have mixed emotions. While I am a little disappointed to not be pregnant again, I’ll take not being pregnant over having a miscarriage any day. Most of the readings I found said emotional healing takes a good three months. While the emotional healing of the miscarriage seems nearly momentary in the span of my trip down Fertility Lane, the surrendering of my ideals and plans seems nearly as cyclical as the months that…

  • Let's Talk Soil Temp

    Every spring, as soon as the sun begins to warm my face, I’m ready to put seeds in the ground. I cannot control the urgency I feel to begin planting. This past spring, I learned a valuable lesson: air temp does not equal soil temp. Every type of seed has an optimum soil temperature for germination. It so happens that beans like 75-80 degrees F, and at this optimum temperature, they will germinate in seven days on average. Planting them…

  • What is Overwintering in the Garden?

    In case you were under any false impressions that I am a seasoned gardener, I will go ahead and make this clear: I am a “Google gardener”. While I don’t have many years experience gardening, I spend a lot of time reading forums and articles about gardening and the specific crops I am growing or planning to grow. I’ve often used Google images to identify my garden pests and then research how to avoid them in the future. The past…

  • Pesto!

    I should have snapped a picture of the basil in my garden because it had grown into such a large healthy clump! The past couple days I’ve been meaning to harvest it before it tried to flower, and this morning Scooby and I went out in search of pine nuts, which we finally found at Fresh Market. I made my pesto with a colander full of fresh basil, three large cloves of garlic, about one-fourth a cup of olive oil,…