I’m starting this article not because of the title subject but what I consider alarming statements made by folks in the US about how the tech used here could be used for clandestine enrichment.

Best cast it’s an attempt to dissuade other countries from adopting the CANDU reactor, or keep Canada buying enriched uranium from the states, and worse case it’s further pretence for annexation.

“The only thing that inhibits Canada is the will to do it, the political decision to do it,” said nuclear weapons expert Steve Fetter of the University of Maryland, who served as head of national security and international affairs in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

…

“All uranium-fuelled reactors produce plutonium. The issue with the CANDU is that it has online refuelling,” explained Ed Lyman, director of nuclear safety for the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington, D.C. “You’re refuelling continuously, which makes it harder for the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency].”

…

“Of the countries that have made nuclear weapons with plutonium, many of them have used a heavy water reactor,” he said.

…

Canada is also branching out into a new kind of technology that will require enriched uranium: the small modular reactor (SMR). Some of the proposed SMRs would use uranium enriched to a level as high as 20 per cent, known as high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU).

…

“And so I worry about this push for advanced reactors, SMRs that use HALEU up near 20 per cent, like the ARC 100 in Canada, that the material itself is in the dangerous band. And if Canada were to pursue a whole fleet of SMRs using HALEU, and especially if they were to build their own enrichment plants to support that, that might give them a threshold capability for bombs, even if they never make highly enriched [over 20 per cent] uranium.”

I hadn’t seen the update, which was posted a month ago. Turns out it was a misunderstanding. 😮‍💨

I can’t believe these beautiful jewels just exist on plants?

I love watching the birds and squirrels go in for a treat, and am thankful they leave us some. I think this is the most we harvested in one go, which is getting me excited for future years 💕

It’s a cultivar but how could you blame me?

I made this small bud vase because I thought it would be easy and useful. Wrong on both counts lol.

I was practicing pinch pots and closed forms, and tested out some glaze combos. I learned a lot about geometry and balance, but from a practical point of view. Rest assured my artistic technique is still quite lacking.

The placement of the openings not only spread the stems out too far, but they are also pointing at a curved surface, which means the buds cannot stand upright. They all splay in opposite directions.

I fixed it with a bit of twist tie forming a ring around the stems.

Flowers are nice though. Zinnia and snap dragons grown from seed, plus some wild daisies.

They are just so absurd.

That’s right! You’re a big scary guy! Not a delicious mild melon.

Bonus gourd:

The bottom part of the main image was shared in another post, but I remembered I took a bunch of photos the other day and meant to post them.

Cucumbers are fucking weird, lol

A few zucchini coming in:

Caveman club gourd, which is very silly looking. I prefer the term wrinkly sac gourd tbh

We did not get a single cucumber last year and very few zucchini. This year we have gotten at least one 💕

It probably could of gone a day or two longer but it was crispy and mildly sweet. I see another on the plant that should be ready in a few days.

Some of the other plants look like they have some fruit set too. I think this is marketmore and was a start we bought. I don’t believe any of the seed starts have caught up.

“Abolition is not absence, it is presence. What the world will become already exists in fragments and pieces, experiments and possibilities. So those who feel in their gut deep anxiety that abolition means knock it all down, scorch the earth and start something new, let that go. Abolition is building the future from the present, in all of the ways we can.” - Ruth Wilson Gilmore (Gilmore and Lambert, 2019).

So far I’ve managed to be easy breezy about pottery but I feel like I’m at risk of getting very weird about learning and adapting Goryeo and Diyao pottery techniques to the materials and equipment available to me.

Can anyone recommend some good resources? I am not having a lot of luck finding instructional content. While I enjoy learning about the history and cultural significance of the work, I want to watch people make it, ideally with commentary. Books would be wonderful too.

I enjoyed this video but not finding a lot out there: https://youtu.be/R1T4K3yaJg0

I should probably also watch out for visiting artists workshops or anyone practicing somewhat close.

I think I have a decent handle on slip inlay but the raised carvings (especially the clouds) illude me.

I picked up some mason stain and a commercial celedon glaze this weekend. I think it would be fun to make some test tiles using the stain to colour my normal clay (white/stone) clay body and inlay with unstained slip. The stain is an azure blue so it won’t look anything like traditional celedon but I’m also using the “wrong” clay and I’m firing in an electric kiln so it’s not like I’ll ever get it to match 😅

As a more general question, where do the other nerds go to get good at a specific style? Do people tend to stick with what teachers and techniques are practiced in your schools?

Okay the title is clickbait some of the berries were planted and there will be some non berry fruit too because I am an anarchist.

Please do not expect responses to pedantry about common names in the comments. I encourage you to share what you call what you see, but insisting on 1-to-1 matching of a common names to scientific name is foolish at best.

Back deck

We did not put these here. There are at least two types of Rubus, and they are even poking up through the deck in places. Delicious!

Garbage shed/pea gravel/driveway

The pea gravel (pre-existing) has been colonized by strawberries. I believe these ones are wild. The fruit are tiny and sweet. We get one or two a year as they are very popular.

There are one or more Rubus popping up by our garbage shed/junk heap and some of the plants what extend on to the driveway are diseased or stressed or something. This year may be the year I finally move all the wood chips away from the fence. After that I will keep this area more tidy and clear, and build a new shed to keep the garbage/recycling in that hopefully keeps out the messy assholes that ravage them.

You can also see some nightshades there. Don’t eat those berries.

Front yard:

We’ve got some Rubus popping up along a fence where we have some sour cherries and sand cherries, as well as some shade perennials. I remove these then I weed the area but haven’t done that for a few weeks.

Sometimes the Rubus pretend to be other plants. Here, they are cosplaying as pansies.

For some reason I have wild grapes on my lawn too. I hazard a guess that they are Vitis riparia.

This is an alpine currant (Ribes) planted here as an understory companion to the crabapple (pre-existing). Neither of those two are for people food, but there is a lot of strawberry down there too.

This collage is two photos of the same sour cherry. We’ve just let the two cultivars we planted (Juliet and Crimson Passion) spread. You can see the new growth on the left side of the right photo: the leaves are more yellow.

Bonus photo of what it looked like when we planted it:

They have had good years and bad, and needed constant attention in the second year, but it’s paying off.

Next is another Ribes, which I think is getting harvested today. It’s in a guild with the Winter Banana (apple). It is also apparently a toilet.

There is a white ribes with the honey crisp, but neither are thriving this year. I think the ornamental rhubarb sucked the life out of them. It’s taller than I am (not pictured).

A cherry may be moving in too:

Here is the cover photo again, with the Thimble Berry hanging out with the loosestrife.

I think it’s Rubus occidentalis but I think we can understand why these are called thimble berries also:

Next up we have groundcherries, which you might know as gooseberries but I know them as things that look very cool but do not taste good. These are volunteers from plants we had years ago that just keep self seeding in different places. I didn’t notice any volunteer tomatillos this year but those are cool too.

This year they decided to hang out with the lupines and poppies.

Back yard: Maple tree

There are at least three types of Rubes here, including a different thimbleberry lol (Rubus odoratus). I think my partner tried transplanting some canes here on a whim but I don’t think three different kinds…

Here is another Ribes and the choke me daddy bush (choke cherry). Both were planted.

Where we actually planned the berries

It’s really hard to capture just how thicc the berries are.

This photo has two types of elderberry (Scotia and York), a Logan Berry, Lingonberry, two raspberries (heritage red and Nova red), two blueberries, wild and cultivar strawberries and a Gooseberry (ribes).

This is the gooseberry that got porcupined to death. Maybe there is still life in the roots.

This is a collage of various strawberry clumps which act as ground cover. I remove it from many places be I want a clear place to walk, but I don’t need to walk everywhere…

The following collages should be pretty self explanatory:

One of two Saskatoon berries:

Another Ribes! And a service berry! And a ground nut! It’s blurry but I am too lazy to go back out.

High bush cranberry which we planted last year when we gave up on finding a service berry that we could fit in the car.

Two blueberries and a Lingonberry! Plus a loganberry and some strawberries that just showed up.

Four haskcap cultivars, because they need to be cross pollinated. We don’t get many of them lol.

Things we did not plant there: backyard edition

Elderberry, loganberry and Rubes that hopped the fence:

Rubes peaking out from the Spotted Touch Me Nots:

(Wild) Dogwood trying to blend in with the Rubes but didn’t know they were a compound berry…

Various berries gentrifying the tomatoes beds after the groundhogs obliterated them

More wild grape, but clearly creeping in from the neighbours yard. It has replaced the wild cucumber that was there a few years ago. This is much nicer.

This elderberry thinks it is garlic:

I hand weeded this bed of Rubes in the spring. I was gonna put some diakon there. How silly of me.

I hope you enjoyed this tour berry much.

In honour of @Bigboye57@lemmy.world mentioning his open pollinated zinnias I wanted to share this absolute unit.

I think it’s a Tripleurospermum inodorum and am kind of bummed it’s not camomile (I had some in that vicinity a few years back) but it’s such a fun plant. Yes, it’s one plant. Check out the stems:

And enjoy some nice shots of the flowers that hide the Eldridge horror that hold them up:

Like two weeks ago I was like “fuck this, seeds aren’t worth it, I hate seeds” but today I’m thinking I might do it again next year 😍

(Started indoors in April lol)

We forgot that we bought one of these a few years back and just assumed it was totally wild. Looking back at our records we did plant one whip back in 2022 and it’s no longer where we put it…so maybe it survived long enough to end up in some animals who then distributed them around the yard.

The pictured grouping is off the back deck.

Don’t mindlessly fidget with this scoring tool in your pocket… I didn’t realize the case wasn’t solid lol

I now have a few new holes in my hand.

https://crazypeople.online/post/21285228

I was slightly worried about stressing these ladies out so I cut back one a lot less than the other, but they are both looking very lush again. The one I defoliated more seems to have more new growth.

My thai basil is looking nice too 🥇

This was posted by user u/Mammoth-Age4933 on reddit. Every time I look at it I see something new that delights me all over again. It’s really impressive and fun.

I have some family visiting this weekend, and I wanted to take the opportunity to send them home with things rather than risking mailing items to them.

The first is a set for a relative who has recently gotten into painting. I am so happy for her and want to show my support. I made a palette in the style that seems to be popular these days, even if it seems impractical to me 😅.

Next time I will try the more traditional shallow wells, but a few test pieces in that style felt wrong and I ended up recycling them.

I’m realizing it’s really foolish to put off getting some powdered glazes for items like this. It’s clearly not food safe but that’s okay lol.

I also made a cup for water with divots to rest a brush on. I like the way the design turned out. I was going for Mediterranean blue and white country pottery vibes with the set.

The next set is extremely disjointed but it was an attempt at a partial sushi serving set for another relative who has started making sushi at home. I wanted to include plates but I greatly over estimated my capacity. I will try and get them done before the next visitor comes in two months. Even that might be a stretch lol.

The set includes:

• two tea cups (I made another matching set of two but they are HIDEOUS)
• what was supposed to be 4 soy sauce bowls but that I didn’t give enough of a depression to, so they can hold wasabi or ginger lol
• set of four totally off theme but cute chop stick rests.

My main lesson learned is that I would like to do some test tiles to refine the glazing technique on the tea cups. The underglaze I used is extremely opaque, but when I mixed it with a white of a different brand to lighten it a bit the brush strokes were more visible (and chaotic) than I wanted.

Clays are all tuckers cone 6 stone ware, a mix of mid white (grogged) for the palette and sushi accessories and either straight up mid smooth stone speckled or whatever my recycle is rn (a mix of all their mid smooth white/stone clays lol).

Underglazes are kiwi and spectrum, and the glaze is spectrum zinc free and mid fire white. Underglaze was applied to greenware.

Bisqued at a slow cone 06 and glazed at medium cone 6, but witness cones show it exceeding cone 6.

(L to R: 7, 6, 5)

It’s sparsely loaded because I’ve got family visiting next week so somehow I will get this all glazed, fired, and cooled before Sunday 🤡

This isn’t quite the plant I envisioned for this pot but it needed a home lol

Hand built with groggy white stoneware, and lots of different glazes layered. I love the crazing at the midway point.

I am also experimenting with stoneware for plant pots. This clay is advertised as 1.5% adsorption at cone 6. I’m way too lazy to test so I’ll just try planting in it! My houseplants are almost exclusively in terracotta planters. I’ve got some cone 06 earthenware with 8% adsorption but I don’t have many low fire glazes and I’m trying to avoid becoming a hoarder.

I did totally forget to build a tray for it. Previously I thought I might build one in but also lol forgot.