Sun Seeds and Promises of Art to Come...

So, I roasted all the sunflower seeds that I harvested so far, and it turned out to be quite a bit.  I took some photos of the process from picking to final roasting.

This first photo is of all the seeds that I got out of the largest of all the flowers so far.

I then soaked the seeds in salt water (about 1/2 cup of salt to 1 quart of water) over night.

Here's a close up of the soaking seeds (because I know you guys like that sort of thing).

Then I laid them out on to a sheet pan and baked them in the oven at 350 f for about 30-45 minutes, shifting them around every once in a while to make sure that they toasted evenly.

Then they were toasted and it was time to enjoy the seeds of my labor.  They were quite tasty, and not as salty as the store bought variety, which I enjoyed.

On another more artistic note (I just realized that the last 5-6 post have been about food and not art, I hope to correct this in the near future) Keturah has pulled out her water colors and started a large painting.  I also made her the water color board that her painting is stapled to (that's kind of artistic, right??).
    I'm headed to the Fire House to finish up those large pots that I talked about in a previous post.  I just need to trim them and add some texture around the shoulders to give them a little more interest.  I will post some pictures of them tonight or tomorrow.  I also have some ideas for making some lidded vessels that I will be working on over the next two days (my "weekend").

Harvest Time...

Went outside to check out the garden today and found that we are swimming in the fruits of our labor.  Not really, but we were able to harvest some fruits from the garden.  I got about a pound of cayenne (or serrano, I’m not quite sure just yet) peppers, two eggplants, and a bunch of sunflower seeds.  We also were able to pluck two whole cucumbers from our massive cucumber plant. 

Our two eggplants, Keturah's going to stuff them and bake them.  Should be quite tasty.

We've hung the peppers up  to dry so that they will keep longer (hopefully)

This is one of our biggest sunflowers to date.

Same flower as above, but this shot shows how much the flower was curved and bent.

I’m predicting that we are just keeping our plants alive through this hellish heat we are having so that they can give us at least a decent harvest when it gets cooler.  I’m hoping that’s true, anyway we plan on planting more lettuce, carrots, beans, peas, leeks, onions, garlic, and some other tasty treats when it starts to cool down a bit (probably the end of September or beginning of October).  

I am also making a couple of large vases, about three feet tall, for my mother in law.  She wants to make a fountain out of them.  I’ll post some pictures of them once I take some pictures, I’m working on them at the Fire House so that I don’t have to move them later since I don’t have a kiln large enough to fire them in at our current home. 

General Update

It’s been a while since I last posted and I wanted to just let everyone know what was going in the days of our lives. As the world turns I have been teaching my pottery class down at the Firehouse Art Center for about four weeks now. I’m really enjoying it and I have great kids to work with, and they all are at different levels of experience so it makes each class more interesting (because they each have different goals they want to reach). We all had a really bad storm this past week that wreaked havoc on the city of Norman, it tore down a bunch of fences, took off some roofs, and shut down electricity in some areas for a couple of days. The worst we got was no electricity for about a day, and the hail did a number on our garden. Mainly it looked like a couple of guys took machine guns to it, every plant had broken stems, every leaf was ripped apart, and the few fruits we had looked like they had exploded. But it’s on the rebound. We also had to take out our corn; ants had taken up residence in the few tiny ears that were growing, so they went in to the compost pile. We have also let the garden in the very back get over run by grass (it’s the plot with the pumpkins, watermelons, and artichokes), it’s to the point now that I feel it would be easier to just get a tiller and till it up again instead of trying to do it by hand or with a hoe. Keturah has started to experiment with making cameos, she is trying to carve one out of an abalone shell we have had sitting around for a while. We are also planning a big weekend in the studio this coming weekend, so hopefully there will be pictures of the work we are doing now by early next week. I have also (with the help of our friend Andy (well he really did everything)) have a new computer and I’m slowly trying to get all the programs I usually use to edit photos back on it so I can post pictures again. We also have joined a bread exchange with a few friends of ours, and the first delicious loaf arrived last week. This coming month is our month to send out a (hopefully) delicious loaf. We are on the fence as to what kind of bread to make, we are looking at either a very nutty bread (maybe with some dried fruit as well) or a spicy bread. Another item on the docket is that we might in the near future have something interesting going on with a shop in Arkansas (more on that later, I need to get Keturah on the phone with some people to get more details). I guess that’s just about everything that needed to be updated, although I’m sure that I’m forgetting something.

Teach it and they will come . . .

At least I hope so. Big news I (David) will be teaching a beginning Ceramics class at the Firehouse Art Center here in Norman starting May 31st. I’m really excited to start teaching again, I really love teaching pottery. Before this opportunity I was thinking about offering private lessons through our studio in our garage, but I think this way is more practical (and it’s not in a garage, but a real studio!!). So if you know anyone who would like to take a ceramics class let them know that now’s the time! Here is a link to the ceramics page on the Firehouse website; it gives all the important information i.e. cost, times, and dates.