Tonight..

Tonight it's hard to calm my thoughts...

Short version:

I've been stepping out of my comfort zone and am trying to return to it, so

I fired my kiln today and wrote a simple poem.

Long version:

These past 11 days I've been caught up in a whirlwind. The Occupy Wall Street movement and a Global show of support- planned for Oct 15/11. I thought I'd help get the word out about it, and see if our Community was wanting to participate in this worldwide event.

Occupy Nelson was created by an expanding group of concerned people...but there were many things that needed to be done... without knowing if 20 people, or 200 would show up for this event. There was one week to organize.

The event was an amazing success, and where it goes from here I don't know. (I'll write a separate blog about it, but there's some photos here.)

I've been busy helping to get the word out. Reading, learning, talking, Twittering, Facebooking, etc... But being an "activist" is not my nature. If you know me at all, you understand that. Wherever there's a crowd, I'm usually quietly, headed the other way, so it wasn't easy for me to be a part of this. Here it is Monday and my head's still buzzing, with a different kind of energy, thoughts, questions ...

3 pieces from the decal firing.

I'm finding it hard to get back into my calm, creative place, so last night I decided to prepare to do a firing. I had promised someone I'd fire a decal on a vase for her, so I went through my stash of ceramic decals and gathered together some of my plain white dishes so I'd have more items to fire.

Decals are easy to apply, but the ones I have are about 20 yrs old and I wonder if they'd still work ok.

It's a sparse load, of 4 mugs, a plate and a vase, but the vase is the important piece.(See the photo).

It was very dark when I went out to the shop (to unplug the peek holes and flip the breaker off.) As I write, I'm wondering how it turned out, but they have to cool slowly, so I can't open the kiln until the morning.

Walking back to the house, I stopped to enjoy the cool, quiet, night and gaze at the dark, clear sky and this poem came to me, so I thought I'd share it...

Tonight...

I looked at the night sky

and saw a star.

It made me wonder...

the longer I looked,

the more I saw.

It made me wonder...

even more.

Occupy Wall Street- comes to Nelson, BC

Time is short and there's lots to do so I'm just adding some links so people know what's going on...

The main place to connect with is: Occupy Nelson: Facebook Page

The Nelson Daily

The Nelson Post

The Nelson Star

The Express

Castlegar - the Source

Our awesome walnut tree.

Our walnut tree in all it's glory.

Close-up of the leaves and an unripe walnut.

Our walnut tree must be about 50 years old.

It creates a spacious environment, under it's

canopy of leaves. (Photos taken-Aug 15/11)

It's the beginning of October and truly feels like fall.

Spike and I collected the 1st batch of nuts from under the walnut tree.

I don't think they fell down on their own, because the squirrels have been up in the tree, chewing the stems, dropping them to the ground-the husks are green and very hard. I'll let them sit in a covered bucket for a few days and hope they soften up, so it's easier to get at the walnuts inside.

The squirrels are upset that I am gathering their nuts, but I don't care, they just bury them all over our yard, and I want to get our fair share. Every year I have to compete with those darned rodents- they love walnuts too… oh yeah, so do the bears! They'll eat them… husk and all!

This big old tree is a lot of work in the fall.

Any day now, all those leaves will suddenly start dropping until they are all on the ground, it only takes a couple of days.

It's pretty cool actually, and sounds like rain falling, since the leaves are substantial.

The walnuts of course will be dropping too and it's not a good idea to hang out under the tree. They hurt. They also make a lot of noise when they hit our garden shed.

Too bad the leaves are no good for composting,

so we either burn them, or take them to the local landfill.

Last year there were hardly any walnuts on the tree.

I don't know what happened, but we only found about 20 nuts! Very disappointing.

But it looks like this year's harvest will be much better.

Even in winter, it still looks pretty awesome.