The sun is beating down in South Philadelphia. One of the best parts of summer in my neighborhood is Bob’s urban garden.
It’s hot enough to make fish soup in the koi pond!
I wonder what kind of plant this is?
This picture is from earlier in the summer.
While I am busy playing with my Silhouette Portrait 3, and finding ways to use it with polymer clay and in the pottery studio, my neighbor Bob has made some changes to his urban garden, and more flowers are blooming! How do you identify flowers if you don’t know anything? Try a Google image search. You can upload pictures right from your phone, tablet or computer.
The Allium flowers have opened!
Touch Me Nots
Canna Lilly
The turtle might live in a cage, but his spirit runs free.
My neighbor Bob is at it again. He’s been planting and tending a big container garden up and down our South Philadelphia street for many years, and he’s gearing up for Spring and Summer, 2022. He gets his plants from all over and doesn’t know what a lot of them are until they come up. Others, like the lily pads, he brings back year after year. I made an attempt to identify the plants this year and had a little success. But this is just the beginning. He’ll be planting more as the months go on, creating a wonderful urban oasis in the midst of asphalt and the steamy sidewalks of a South Philly summer.
I think this is a Clementine tree
Corpse flower. This one is pollinated by flies and it STINKS when it’s in full bloom
I couldn’t identify the three remaining plants, although Google tried to tell me that the one below was grapes. I don’t know much, but I know these are definitely not grapes!
I thought this might be a chlamydia until a friend informed me that that was the name of a sexually transmitted disease and not a flower.
I am dying to see what this one looks like when it blooms. Maybe it is some kind of tulip.
If you’d like to see pictures of the garden in years gone by, press here.
Every Spring for a week or so, the flowering trees in Philadelphia burst into bloom all over the city.
Everywhere you look, the trees are showing off their blossoms like they’re in a competition to see who can be the showiest.
The party lasts about a week and then it’s over. Enjoy it while you can.
The crocuses are peeping up in Bob’s garden. What more proof could we need?
I am delighted to be taking part in the Art Elements Blog Hop for July. The theme is one of my favorites: flowers. I’ve written about flowers on my blog many times. But I usually photograph flowers instead of trying to make them (unless you count my felt flowers).
I took the opportunity of the July Flowers theme to complete a project I’d left unfinished for some time. I had fired a batch of bronze clay and had been making rings and embellishments from 10 gauge bronze wire I was annealing and shaping in my rolling mill. I had some bronze clay flowers I made in molds that I wanted to attach to milled rings. I have been a bit challenged in the hand department lately because of some kind of tendonitis or impaction and can’t do much with my right hand. But I was able to finish some gentle shaping of the wire that I had previously hammered into shape and to solder it on to the flower. Here is a brief explanation of the process:
The bronze wire is stiff and hard when it’s 10 gauge thick but I love the look of thick wire and the versatility a thick gauge gives me. You have to anneal it often as you pass it through the rolling mill. I changed it to a square shape.
The bronze clay behaves very much like ceramic clay in its unfired state, so I was able to push a bit of it into a silicone mold to make the flower. I had to let the flower dry and refine any cracks and sharp edges before firing it in activated carbon. The firing was successful and I got metal which I then soldered to the bronze wire ring I had previously made.
The ring is fun to wear. Not too flashy and it looks at home next to the stack of bronze and silver rings I wear every day.
And here are some fun flower magnets that I made from Terra Cotta clay and a press mold. I painted them with underglazes and finished with a glossy clear glaze.
If you are interested here is some of my flower photography from past travels. Mendocino, and Singapore,
Please visit all the artists participating in the Art Elements Blog Hop for July:
Visiting Artists:
Alysen
Cat
Divya
Evie and Beth
Jill
Kathy
Linda
Martha
Melissa
Michelle
Rozantia
Sarah
Sarajo
Tammy
Alysen
Cat
Divya
Evie and Beth
Jill
Kathy
Linda
Martha
Melissa
Michelle
Rozantia
Sarah
Sarajo
Tammy
and the Art Elements Blog contributors:
Caroline
Cathy
Claire
Jenny
Laney
Lesley
Marsha
Susan
It happened while I was at Clayathon. Dark chilly days and then POW! I was sneezing and blowing my nose. The allergy fairy took hold of me and fairly rattled my teeth, even though I usually don’t suffer from Hay Fever, the pollen levels were off the charts!
Spring has come to Philadelphia and to my neighbor Bob’s sidewalk garden
Flowers are popping out all over my part of Philadelphia. The tree blossoms are only blooming for a few days before they fall from the tree limbs and collect on the sidewalk. until then, every walk is glorious Spring.
A bunch of pictures from this week
Caught the Wind Challenge Exhibition at Fleisher Art Memorial
Took pictures of the many mushrooms that have popped up in my neighborhood after last week’s rain.
Flowers are beautiful even when they’re dying
Helped kids paint pumpkins at Palumbo Recreation Center
Some Pottery in Progress
Saw some new (to me) Murals
And met some incredible artists and makers at Philadelphia Open Studio Tours at the Bok Building. This deserves its own post. Stay tuned,
Last week, a reader warned about the application of a toxic herbicide called glyphosate to wheat crops rendering all but organically grown wheat safe to eat. I decided to read up on glyphosate. The Food Babe blog pointed out the dangers posed by this chemical, citing a report by a group called Food Democracy Now. (Read the report here.) But the Snopes.Com site argues that the report’s information is false. I am not a chemist and cannot do my own tests. I will say that the discussion of the scientific methodology used in the report seems vague, (compare the testing done to determine the link between smoking and lung cancer), but I do not know whether this comes from an intent to deceive, poor writing, or an editorial decision that the reader would not understand a more thorough discussion of the testing procedures used. I have not come to a conclusion. I am presenting this information so readers can draw their own conclusions.
I had intended to write this week’s post about Beading Yoda’s lovely beaded flowers. But that will have to wait.
What a week this has been. Boris is almost recovered from the Benjimonster and is much less stressed. I cannot say the same for myself. It all started so innocently. My health insurance company decided to give its customers a discount on their premiums if they enrolled in a program called Active Health to learn about healthy habits, adiet, exercise, and so on. You get points for each module you complete. Collect 100 points and you get your discount. Easy, right? Wrongo Bongo!
I logged onto the program’s website and managed to enroll after numerous calls to customer service to learn how to navigate a website obviously designed by Dr. Mengels.
In the weeks that followed, I duly entered my blood pressure, my cholesterol, completed questionnaires, and studied health topics. As I completed each module, I was awarded a certain number of points. I was on my way to my discount.
Nor so fast.
Yesterday, I foolishly downloaded the Active Health iPad app for the program and completed more tasks. As I tracked my progress, I noted the app was not saving anything. And there was no option for me to save. I tried to contact customer service online. There was a place to write a message but no way to send the message. So, I called customer service.
I was referred to another number. Then a third number. Then I spent almost an hour with a service rep who tried to guide me through the website. But, as I repeatedly reminded her, I was using the app, not the website. Alas, she could neither help me nor refer me to someone who could. “And yet,” as the saying goes, “she persisted.” As I hung up I wondered where she got her stamina.
Later that evening, I decided to try again on the website instead of the app. I ran into the same problem. I called customer service again. As the conversation with a different rep wore on, I realized that he knew that the website did not work,and that tech support was non existant. But the rep was creative-I’ll give him that-he suggested that I abandon the online health education module altogether and opt for phone counseling in order to get my points So I agreed. We scheduled an appointment with a health counselor. Then the rep started to rattle on about the Philadelphia Eagles. Time to say goodbye.
The health counselor called the next day at the appointed time. “What health issues would you like to work on? ” she asked.
“Stress,” I replied, “I really need to work on my stress.”
“What gives you stress? ” she queried.
“I was doing pretty good before I enrolled in the Active Health program,” I admitted, “but broken website coupled with service reps who don’t have the resources they need to do their job has caused me a great deal of stress.”
“Oh.”
The counselor suggested that I meditate and gave me a number I to call if the stress became overwhelming. “There are counselors there to help you,” she informed me.
“Is this covered by my insurance?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she responded. “Let’s schedule another session.”
“How’d it go?” my husband asked me later that day. “Not as bad as I thought it would be,” I admitted. “In fact, I’ve decided to start smoking again so at our next session she can give me advice on how to quit.”
Only two more counseling sessions to go.
And now, to keep myself honest, here are pictures of flowers taken on my walks around Philadelphia.
It certainly looked like it in my neighborhood. I took these pictures today on the walk home from the pottery studio.
And here’s one of the cacti from Bob’s garden. I know it looks like a bunch of deflated balloons now, but its cactus pads will be stiff as soldiers come summer.
I have been busy making mugs and I’ll post a few pictures in the coming weeks. In the meantime, here are some of my favorite pieces from the Fleisher Student Show.
Ornamento 