A Full Day

This is what I did in pottery today. Two and a half hours to paint the whole sort-of caladium white, as a base, and then to add those two colors of green. I do three coats of everything which is why it takes so much time. I believe I am going to add some red and some pink in there somewhere. Caladiums come in such a huge rainbow of colors and designs that it's hard to settle on a color scheme. 

Here are just a few of the different varieties you can buy bulbs for. 

I am so fascinated, looking at different images of them that I am now ready to plant my entire yard in caladiums. Wouldn't that be a glory?  
I am especially drawn to this one. 

Florida Cardinal is their name. And they are supposed to be very large. 
I am starting to think that perhaps caladiums are like so many things that suddenly become more interesting than you thought possible as you age and you wonder- where have these things been all my life? 
Like feeding crows. 
I believe I'll start doing some research on caladiums and see when the best time of year to plant them is. That should give me more impetus to clear out some of the beds I've been working on in such a desultory manner for so long so that I can put in some of these beauties. 

Pottery was fun today. I was not in a very light mood when Jessie and I got there but over the course of the class, I felt better and better. I talked to Lizzie and a few other people and painted on my platter. She is working on some of her whippets and a few cats and she is painstakingly painting them with Stroke and Coat too, so we sit there with our little brushes and our little paint bottles and we discuss everything from tonight's menu to what the kids and grandkids are up to, to politics, although we're not really supposed to do that, and a lot of other stuff. It's rather lovely. Gentleman Caller™did not make it in today which was disappointing. He's back to being a professor of constitutional law at the university which is his work. 
I took a picture of the one-ticket-per-square squares on the shelves where we set our pieces to be fired so you can get an idea of how this will go. 

These are some of Lizzie's cats (which she has just started doing) and a whippet. She makes them for people who actually have pets who look like the ones she's making. After they are fired they are precious. But to get a sense of size- well, that ticket is the size of your regular ticket that you'd get to go on rides at the fair. The pieces themselves are perhaps two and a half inches long? I'm not good at spatial stuff but that's what I'd guess. 

After class Lily met Jessie and me at Bumpa's, the sports bar we like because the food is sort of amazingly good. I finally remembered to take a picture of the salad I always get. 

That's seared sesame-encrusted ahi tuna on delicious salad items. It's hard to beat. 

Since we're talking about food (how surprising!) I'll show you my fourth (I think) attempt at the type of bread I'm trying to make. 

I am so getting there. I have to say this bread was delicious and had all the good fiber-y and protein-y things in it. Instead of cottage cheese in this batch, I used Greek yogurt. I think it worked better. We ate it with our soup last night and this morning I had a piece toasted with peanut butter. But back to the soup- do you remember me saying that I'd read the immature Seminole pumpkins can be picked and used like a summer squash? 
I tried it. 

It is the most tender vegetable you can imagine with a good, mild flavor. I think it would be amazing stir fried with other vegetables or just sauteed with onions. No need to peel it. I chopped this one up and added it to the soup. As I was serving that soup up last night I told Glen that the amazing thing was that there had never been another soup exactly like this one in the history of the universe and I think that's probably true. And it's true for many, many soups made at home with vegetables and proteins and herbs and flavorings that just happen to be hanging around and are all put together in whatever unique way the person making it creates their soup. 
Glen loved that idea but he also noted that because I hardly ever use a recipe for my soup, if he, say, asked for that same soup on his birthday, I wouldn't be able to recreate it. 
I told him that not only would I not be able to recreate it, I probably wouldn't remember making it. 
But it was pretty darn good soup. 

As a little bit of a lagniappe to last night's post, I have been amazed and yet not amazed at the outpouring of love and respect for Dolly Parton on social media. Not just from America, but from the world. So very many marginalized communities are coming forth to express why they loved this woman so much. She meant something different to all of us, I think, but everything she represented was beautiful. 

This really tore at my heart.

The Empire State Building, lit up with glittery pink in her honor. I can just hear her tinkly laugh of delight if she could see that. 
Dare I say that the Empire State Building was in drag? 

Yes. I do believe I do. 

Love...Ms. Moon