January 12th and 65 F.......

A week of moving slow, long walks after too much Christmas cheer and just plain getting my bearings again.  Of course I have a sore throat and feel like I've been scraped off the bottom of my muck boots.  

A week of mild weather and today an all time high of 65 F.  The snow is gone!  Rivers are too swollen to go fishing so instead, head first into the dirt.  

I had covered my potato patch with straw pretty well and this was the day to dig the last of the reds and whites.  Weighed in right around 44#'s.  Tonight dinner, oven roasted redskin potatoes with rosemary and seasonings.  Yum!  We grilled outside too, grass fed burgers with homemade catsup and pickles.  Grated a stored head of cabbage into coleslaw and dinner felt like we should have been sitting at the picnic table in the middle of July.

The rest of the potatoes are drying on the studio floor.  I'll rub the dirt off in a couple days and store them in baskets on the dirt floor of our cold, dark basement.  It's a great root cellar, in this day and age when every body's basement is a Rec Room or Media Center I guess I will call it a designer root cellar and I could not be happier!  

Finally dug the Jerusalem Artichokes.  If it's still nice in the morning I will take the biggest corms and plant them in a sunny part of the garden for next year's crop.  I have waited three years for these sunchokes!  The deer eat them to the ground every year!  Finally!  and they are delicious! 

Finally back at the wheel too.  Been a long time coming but it is where I am happiest on a rainy day.  Good to start with porcelain mugs and round pots.  In a few weeks I will be bored and start fooling around with new forms but for now I am quite content making simple forms.  Simple everything on every level right now.  

The dust is settling and no big surprise I have lost my voice, for now it's just time; 

"To Be".