Home again home again jiggety-jig

May was fun. We went to Sacramento, and had visitors here for two weeks. We even had dinner guests here for the first time. Tons of fun. Now everyone is gone, the house is quiet, and the rain has stopped for now.

It's been very nice being sociable and being distracted from thinking about all the things I want to get done. Sometimes I get so focused on checking things off of The List that I forget to take a breather and appreciate what we have here. We got to do some touristy things like going to the Blue Basin and the Painted Hills. Both trips were great and I don't know why we hadn't done them before. I guess I convince myself that I should be productive almost every day, instead of really relaxing and enjoying what we have here. Which leads to me being only a tiny bit productive every day and not allowing myself to enjoy the good stuff. Hmm. Someday I will have to buckle down and get a schedule with days of being productive and days of taking it easy. That would be good. I get a reprieve from buckling down in June, since I will be at a pottery workshop for the last two weeks of the month. Maybe I'll get serious in July. Then again, maybe not. July is a great month for fishing and hiking and rafting and swimming and gardening and eating and going to the orchards and doing anything but working or remodeling.

It's been raining and raining here. We have gotten all of our plants into the garden, but we haven't really had to water, because of all the rain. The chard and the broccoli are thriving. Everything else looks a little pale, maybe from lack of sunshine and warmth. We built a tall fence for the tomatoes to climb, but they haven't grown to the bottom of the fence yet. True to form, I chose to plant a bazillion things that will need all different kinds of attention throughout the summer. Tomatoes, corn, beans, squash, chard, broccoli, herbs, peas, peppers, lettuce, flowers, etc, etc. Perhaps we have bitten off more than we can chew. Maybe we'll get lucky and be awash in vegetables.

We are hosting a couple of horses on our property. It's really cool to wake up in the morning and see them already at work, munching away and keeping the field trimmed short. They seem to be having a good time, consulting with our neighbors' horses, eating and eating, and wandering aimlessly from end to end of the field. Of course we are collecting manure for our compost heap. [Maybe it wasn't such a good idea to put the compost heap a mere 30 feet away from our bedroom window.] I wish more of our property was fenced in, so we could get the horses to mow the lawn, too. We haven't bought a lawnmower yet, so we are paying to have it mowed by a local kid. He does a fine job, but everything that the mower doesn't reach is totally out of control. I don't think the horses would eat the thistles and mustard, though, so maybe a goat is in order. Or a weedwhacker, but I've always wanted a goat. I wonder if we could use a goat on the lawn instead of a lawnmower.

This two-week pottery workshop is looming on the horizon. Two whole weeks of throwing, wedging, carving, glazing, firing, and learning. At first I was really looking forward to it, but now I am anxious about the intensity of it. My hands are still not in the best of shape, and I am not sure that I'm up to the physical demands of throwing every day for two weeks. I might have to sit out some of the sessions. I hate the thought of having to curtail what I want to do because my stupid hands can't keep up. However, I hate the thought of having surgery on my hands even more. So I am doing stretches and exercises and trying to take it easy and rehabilitate myself. This sucks. I hate having limitations.

So, while I have been trying to take it easy, instead of pounding clay for hours on end, I have been intensely studying glaze chemistry for the last couple of months. The reference materials are boring and some contradict each other, but I am beginning to get a handle on it. My goal is to formulate a light blue-green-white mottled glaze that will look sort of dreamy and oceanic, like little whitecapped waves. I should start with something easier to formulate, but having a clear goal in mind does keep me on track and interested in learning all that I can.

I am collecting some of the native clays from around the area, to try out as clay and glaze materials. Lately when we go out for a drive, I'm intensely scanning the roadcuts for interesting soils, instead of sitting back and enjoying the scenery. We stop and take little samples from all kinds of places. I think of romantic names for the clay and glaze colors. Unluckiest Mailbox is the clear sandy root-beer glaze collected from a roadcut next to a mailbox that is riddled with bullet holes. Shooting Range Red is a deep, rusty red clay. We dug some clay near Richmond (ghost town) last week. On the same trip, we ran over a rattlesnake, and went back and picked it up. Depending on the fired color of that clay, I'll either call it Rattlesnake Red, or Ghost Town. I hope to dig some blue-green clay on Longview ranch soon. Of course, I will call it Longview.

We are awaiting hunting season with bated breath. We have applied for our deer and elk tags, and also a 'point saver' for pronghorn. If we get the tags we applied for, we can hunt during the controlled hunts, in the areas that have better odds. If not, then we can still hunt for deer and elk during the open season, but our odds probably won't be as good. All I can say is that if we get an elk, I will be thrilled beyond belief, we will have to buy a chest freezer and a smoker, and we won't ever buy beef again. It would be really cool if we got a deer too, but elk meat is just the best. We are not hunting for pronghorn this year, but someday I would like to.

We have no idea of really HOW to hunt, so our odds are probably not that good. We are not really sure how to prepare for hunting, either. I want to at least become a good enough marksman so that that won't be a factor in my hunting success. We have the shooting range for target practice. I am trying to learn how to shoot for accuracy without the bench. I don't think I can do it standing up, so I am practicing shooting while sitting down with the rifle balanced on one knee. That seems to be OK. Now if I can do that in the woods, quickly, without spooking an elk, I might have a chance. I want to do some backcountry hiking before hunting season, to see if we can figure out where the tasty guys live. So far we have been a little leery of going way out in the woods alone, because there are known to be plenty of mountain lions, feral pigs, and bears out there. I want to be the huntER, not the huntED. Various townspeople have warned us not to go out in the forest unarmed, too. So we got a little handgun, and now we feel a lot more confident that we are not defenseless against the things with big teeth and claws.
I used to worry about getting mugged or otherwise preyed upon in the city. I think of the guy who mugged me in Sacramento as kind of a wild animal. I think it takes some kind of inhuman mind to attack someone on a busy street in broad daylight. Out here, it's different, but in a way it's the same. I still carry my pepper spray. But out here, we think that the inhuman predators are easier to spot from a distance.

No more typing, it's time to do exercises.