Tired of insta and etsy, starting my mastodon journey today!
So let me do an #introduction post. I make ceramics and porcelain in a small studio in Berlin.
Sometimes practical, but mostly experimenting with the artistic side.
German and English are not my native, so expect me to translate a lot.
The cicadas have arrived (West suburbs of Chicago). They seem particularly fond of the native plants such as cup plant. Although they are throughout the garden, it's nothing like the pictures I've seen with thousands all over. #Cicadas#cicadas2024#cicadageddon@gardening#insects#bugs
For those not in the know, this is one of the Amanita #mushrooms referred to as a Destroying Angel. Never, ever, ever, ever #forage with an #app. Especially for mushrooms.
New pink plant for my pink plant themed #IkeaCabinetIndoorGreenhouse. The illustrious Philodendron Erubescens "Pink Princess" from my favourite women owned/black owned nursery!
It's been such an active season, which feels really wonderful.
We've finished cleaning up the West side of the house, allocating last year's compost. We also built framing for, sewed, and hung custom shade sails that make the house cooler -- summer is officially here in the high desert -- as well as which make that previously underutilized space another communal/hosting/patio type area just by virtue of being there and creating spacial separation.
My gardens are doing okay, something keeps eating my potato plants' leaves. I thought the birds that nest in the honey mesquite tree at first, but it keeps happening despite the chicken wire I've hung over the infiltration basin. My hunch is some insect, though I've yet to see the culprit in action. My white, black, and violet sages I replanted into the infiltration basin are doing great, though, as are the green onions and garlic I planted. Our nopales are slowly coming back, also, now that we've dug them infiltration basins and moved them to the shade of one of our mesquite trees.
We now have a water storage tank, a critical step in enabling us to get bigger livestock. It creates water resilience if the power goes down and our well pump doesn't work, and enables us to take some pressure off of our aquifers for minor irrigation projects.
A straw bale and adobe bunk house for guests and guest bathrooms are in the works, which will add to our capacity for hosting. A good thing, since we're grateful to be booked with visitors and loved ones from now until January.
We're planting five new trees to attract pollinators, some of our date palms are fruiting (despite being too immature to eat this year), and the infiltration basins on the North side of the property that were on hold are in progress again.
Our broody hen got confused when I moved her to her own coop the first time and abandoned her first clutch (that was my fault) but has successfully been sitting in the broody coop on a fresh clutch for a week now, so we're expecting teeny cluckers soon!
There are other projects that are set to begin soon, as well, but I'll have to update on those later on!
A reminder that if you ever want to support what we're doing here at the ranch, my Kofi directly funds projects like these and contains some sustainable goodies and unique art in return 🤍
#CyngorCaerffili#CaerphillyCouncil sent this as part of their usually 'Newsline' update. Sounds great doesn't it? Except the first they thing did this morning was send a lawnmower man down to completely obliterate all the #WildFlowers growing in the wild area at the bottom of our bank. It's literally cut so low I can see bare earth. 🤦♂️ #NatureIsntNeat#NoMowMay
(You may need to click on the photo to see all of it).