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Hey artsy and crafty people. My wife is attending her first Art Show in 18 months and I’d like to invite you happy mutants to stop by to check out some of her work (here on BB and her site), but this time in person. We will be exhibiting at the Michigan Fiber Festival at the Allegan County Fairgrounds on August 20/21/22. So, get out of the house, come pet some sheep, make farm bad farm puns, and see some wonderful artists and craftspeople demonstrating their trade. Buy a homemade sweater, get a wall hanging, but most of all, have fun.
This is our first time at the Michigan festival and if the drive is a bit far for you, we will also be at the Garden State Sheep & Fiber Festival on September 11/12 along the NJ/PA border. We also have some upcoming non-farm events in North Jersey later this autumn too.
Stay safe and stay creative.
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following up on my earlier post re: testing out new glass kiln.
after initial slump of the rods, new, straight rods were inserted into the pathways in the slumped ones:
then fired flat:
detail:
will need to tighten things up next go, but for a first time using this kiln and this process, I am extremely pleased.
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Not quite what you were going for but what you ended up with is interesting. It reminds me of waves. I imagine the same technique but with monchrome colors and a few lines of something contrasting and it could result in a subtle but fascinating pattern.
I really want to learn how to do glass like that.
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Nice little harvest from my raised beds yesterday:
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Oooh, so pretty, so yummy!
(And I have armyworms and hornworms all of a sudden… 
)
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Oh, yuck.
We got a bunch of hornworms last year but caught them before they did much damage. So gross, though.
I’ve been keeping my eyes out for them this year - so far nothing. (Hope I didn’t just jinx myself!) But something mysterious is “pruning” some of our pepper plants in a different area just enough that they are staying alive, but totally depauperate and not producing any fruit. 
And I had a thriving new hugelkulture bed full of thriving squash plants get decimated by our local groundhogs a few weeks ago. Gardening has taught me resiliency, if nothing else!
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However did you manage to grow cauliflower with all the heat? Mine popcorned really early. I’ve given up on growing it at this stage.
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No idea. This is only my second year trying (last year they got chomped by deer). I tend to overcrowd my raised beds and weed very sporadically, so maybe the shade from the other plants helped?
But I’ve seen your pics and have total garden envy. I feel like I should know more by this point, but mostly have no clue what I’m doing.
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I’m still trying to figure it out too. Some of my beds are severely overcrowded!
I’ve been battling rabbits and rodents. I had a fence put around the yard three years ago to keep out the bunnies. Fail. I then fenced the garden last year which kept out the adults but the baby buns went right through as if it wasn’t there and decimated my brocolli, so I had to add a layer of 1/2" wire to the fence. But the squirrels, chipmunks and mice are quite happy to scale the fence. I use live traps and release anything I catch in the forest preserve.
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Me, too! @anon87143080 has an enviable garden!
I have always seriously overcrowded my gardens, and every few years (especially when I had a yard and a 10’x20’ organic garden) I would try square foot gardening or making pretty rows, and I seemed to get a lot less produce, probably because there were 2 or 4 times more plants, and they seemed to not be bothered by the crowding.
This is the garden currently. The blackberries are done, the strawberries are getting eaten by the critters despite the bird netting, and it’s been too hot and dry for the tomatoes to get big.I’ll have to start watering if I want a decent harvest. There’s many many volunteer tomatoes here, the most notable the one in the lower left. The air conditioners from the bakery drain into that drain, and the bakery owner put up the cages for it. It’s like the bakery’s pet.
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Looks nice! That’s a cute cage the bakery used. Home made?
I’ve gotten some cool volunteers this year. Two of them are, I think, Ground cherries, aka, husk tomatoes but the flowers are purple, not white, so I’m not 100% sure yet. The benefit of lackadaisical weeding! I only left them because the flowers are pretty, and now they’re fruiting.
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My tomato cages from 2 years ago (see rust from storing them with the rest of the junk on the side of the garage)!
eta: placed upside down and the stakes bent together for support or aesthetics or something.
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The kid is very enamored of Smolder from my little pony. I made her a tail and I’m working on a head-thingy. This is the tail. It wiggles in the cutest way when she runs.
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the headpiece has the crest. Still need the horns. It might be difficult to get it off her head long enough to attach them.
ETA: I just noticed the kid wiggle blurred all the detail in that photo. Here is a better one
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Garden: I have no idea why that one branch has an entire bouquet of blooms, but I’m loving it.
ETA: it is a Charles Darwin by David Austin Roses. It isn’t supposed to be a climber, but this bush is determined! Charles Darwin | English Shrub Rose | David Austin Roses
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Saturday morning harvest. Looks like I’ll be spending the weekend making Salsa and pasta sauce, and canning.
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This afternoon’s pickings. Cucumber, pickling cucumber, “communist” tomatoes, turnips, zucchini, acorn squash. Posed for my daughter’s sketching homework
My daughter calls them communist tomatoes because I grew them from seeds taken from a grocery store tomato, thereby “seizing the means of production”.
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