"One Pine" Ceramic Pendant Featured on the BeadedTail Blog!

One Pine Ceramic Pendant

Don't you just love nice surprises? Sharla, of the BeadedTail Blog, has featured Etsy artists from Oregon and included my "One Pine" ceramic pendant shown above.  Be sure and visit her blog to see some beautiful work from Oregon :)

Sagebrush Mariposa Tulip

Photo by Jo Stanbrough
Sagebrush Mariposa Tulip (Calochortus macrocarpus)
Lily Family (Liliaceae)

Who says the high desert of Central Oregon is mostly brown? This time of year, a miraculous thing happens. A single long, green stalk begins to push upward very unassumingly, only to burst open with the most beautiful shades of purple and yellow. These gorgeous wild tulips only remain for a day or so before they begin to droop and fade.

Tibetan Amulet Bolo Style Necklace

This is a new style of necklace for my Good Dirt Jewelry shop. A while back, I blogged about a really neat antique Tibetan amulet I had purchased. While I never found anyone who could tell me who the deity is, I still found it captivating and thought it would make a unique pendant. I've always been fond of the bolo style of necklace and I thought this amulet lent itself nicely to be displayed in this manner. I finished off the tips with wooden beads and copper wire.

These new pieces will be making their debut at the 4th of July festival in Bend, Oregon. If you happen to be in Bend this Saturday, be sure and stop by to say "Hello!" :)

The Potato Experiment

I'm no stranger to gardening or growing potatoes. Our little farm in Oklahoma had a quarter of an acre garden plot that provided our family with fresh veggies, including potatoes. Gardening in the high desert of Oregon is a whole new ballgame! LOL Not only do you have to contend with below freezing temps that can last well into June, but you also have to deal with the problem of having no topsoil. Our home sits at the edge of an ancient caldera (extinct volcano), so our ground consists of rocks and smaller rocks :)

Since we just finished our back deck, we decided to try our hand at gardening in pots, and so far so good! The photo above, is our first attempt at growing red potatoes in a half wine barrel and they are looking great! We'll have to wait a while to see if there are actually any potatoes though :) If this experiment is successful, I'll write a follow-up post with details on what we used inside the barrel.

Update!

Well, our great potato experiment wasn't very successful. The plants bloomed and began to die, as was expected, but when we dug them up, we only had about 6 normal size red potatoes and about 15 tiny ones. I cooked them with a corned beef and they were quite tasty, as they should be considering how much we invested to grow them! :) Nothing ventured, nothing gained!

The Morning Visitor

Tiger Swallowtail Butterfly

I had a beautiful little visitor this morning!  It was gracefully sipping nectar from my comfrey plants and thoughtfully stopped long enough for me to run back inside and grab my camera.

Great New Tynt Tracer JavaScript

Have you ever had someone use one of your photos without permission, or even worse, "borrowed" your idea completely?  I have just discovered the neatest little bit of javascript by Tynt,  that can be added to your blog or website that alerts you every single time one of your visitors right-clicks and saves your content!

What does Tracer do?

Tracer secretly tracks when users copy content from your web site and automatically adds a link back to the original page when your content is pasted.  Tracer allows you to view statistics on how often content is copied from your site, what that content is and what keywords are being copied most. 

The Sea Horse

The Sea Horse

Every evening after we had finished for the day at our art show held Memorial Day weekend in Yachats, we would go roaming along the sandy beach to unwind. One evening, I spotted this wonderful piece of driftwood shaped like a seahorse. When I tried digging it up to bring home, I discovered it was actually a HUGE piece! LOL The next day when I went back to take more photos, it was nearly completely covered by the shifting sands.