Pottery today, kind of last minute. I'm trying to throw bigger pieces. It's neat to see that a lot of my skill actually has been retained. Last time I could center ok, and I threw maybe the biggest bowls I've done? Then today was bigger again. Structurally everything is very different with the larger pieces: this clay is pretty smooth and soft which means it tends to sag with the wide curves I like.

I'm putting off doing plates for now, though one of the clay folks used the slab roller today and it worked so really there's no reason not to. Well, except that there's very little vegetation out. My last series of plates was botanical impressions, it might be neat to do a spring series labelled with latin name and date of each full leaf to open and be impressed on the clay, actually.

Wickson apples and one arkansas black are peeking above the soil. I think all my tomatoes are up. Peppers are starting. Potatoes keep popping up randomly, it really is a less domesticated seed (domestic seeds are generally selected for early uniform germination whether the selector intends to or not, since those seeds outcompete the others in a farm/garden setting unless one takes care to capture and space the later ones).

Chives are up! No nettles or asparagus yet, but a touch of grass and the chives. Come to think of it I should go back into the chive field and make myself an omlette.

Finished planting things April 8. I got in to cells (most of which are germinating, but there will be some misses). One cell is mostly one individual for plant-out space planning purposes.

Allium (6, but I pack them pretty tight into cells and separate at plant-out)
Artichokes (18)
Asparagus (42)
Basil (48)
Dahlia (24)
Goji berry (2)
Ground cherry (24)
Peppers (144)
Potato (144)
Peruvianum (12)
Rhubarb (12)
Tomato (442)
Tomatillo (40)

Hm, my math isn't adding up, need to recount. Anyhow, 12 flats of 72 cells each I think. All planted between April 3 and 8. I will maybe do some cucumbers later, still not sure.

My apples were also starting to sprout, or many of them are, which is super exciting. I need to get them out of plastic bags and into soil.

Also I'm going to grow F1s for two more hand cross tomatoes: one that's taiga as the parent (pollen parent lost) and one that's carbon as the pollen parent (small red as the mother). They kind of sat on the counter all winter, so I'm not sure how they'll work, but it's exciting.

I'm thinking pretty seriously about keeping a clone of each F1 in the aerogarden so I'm sure to get plenty of F2 seed. Not sure how that will work for full-sized tomatoes; I guess I could try kratky finally for them? F1s have no real need to be tested in soil or anything like that, they just exist to provide as much F2 seed, and thus as many variations in offspring, as possible.

Spring was so slow and cold and now it's so fast, snow is almost gone except for on my mushroom bed and the north side of my house as the sunset swings around and sunlight covers more ground every day. Last year was ultra dry - many wells ran out in January - and we got normal snowpack so it's looking to be a dry spring and likely a bad fire season. Fingers crossed.

Costing out re-covering my greenhouse with soft plastic (cheap, need to redo frequently) or hard plastic (expensive, only needs redoing every 20 years).

Whatever is going on with me is still going on; anytime I do things I'm super exhausted after for sometimes days. Luckily I don't need to do too much right now. Hopefully I'm recovered by plant-out time.