We have been back in the pottery doing a little bit of painting, adding some colour to our lives. We decided on a cornflower blue for the east wall of the glazing room. The old gal-iron tin on this wall was in good condition, but just seemed a little dull against the other brighter walls. It had always been our intension to paint all 4 walls these bright colours. Principally to hide the vast range of pre-painted re-cycled drab colourbond roofing sheets that I had scrounged  from all over Sydney and the Highlands over the past year to clad and line this new more fire-resistant design of pottery shed.
However, when I put up these last full length sheets of perfect, matt grey, weathered and aged, galvanised iron. I couldn’t initially bring my self to paint them. I had to live with them a few weeks, before I came to terms with the fact that as perfect as they were, they would look so much better, and fit in with the original concept more completely, if they were painted cornflower blue. So it is done! I completed the second coat this evening after I finished work in the maintenance shed. I spent the day cleaning, grinding, repairing and painting bits of old rusted and burnt out machinery left over from the fire. The new colourful walls look great and give me an uplifting sense of pleasurable colour therapy whenever I walk in there. So much better than dealing with burnt-out and rusted junk machinery.
This bright colourful room is designed to be multi-functional. Primarily as the glazing and decorating room, but also doubling as display space when we take part in the annual Southern Highlands Artist Open Studios weekends in the first two weekends in November each year. I think that it will work. But time will tell.

Janine does the touching-up around the edges with a brush.

After work I spend a bit of time picking a range of some of our past-their-best, sub-prime, vegetables from the garden, stuff that is going to seed and past its best for salads. I make a wholesome vegetable stock with them. It’s a cold day, Janine has lit the wood fired stove and its so nice and toasty-warm in the kitchen when I come in from the garden.The vegetable stock is a little thin, but well flavoured. 
We decide to make an Italian inspired ‘risotto-like’ rice meal with loads of vegetables.This is not a real risotto because we have added far too many vegetables. This is more like a vegetable stir fry, except that we are boiling and simmering the rice and vegetables in stock. Not frying them. so its a vegetable boil-up. Doesn’t sound so good that way, does it.
Whatever this meal is called, its pretty good! And so organic, so immediately local, so fresh, low carbon miles, low fat, low salt, low GI and delicious.

I serve it up in a couple of our somewhat rough and heavily textured , ash glazed and wood fired rice bowls. Such is our self-reliant life.