tisdag 5 juli 2011

Coconut pottery....

During our last vacation in Thailand, we realised that it was pretty common to see orchids hanging in trees (or anywhere else for that matter) in coconuts. The guys use "full scale coconuts", that is the whole thick skin. This makes me believe that if they do that, there must be a very good reason. Probably orchids like that.
As it is not as easy to get fetch of whole coconuts and the coconuts you find here do not either have the thick skin nor are of a "reasonable" size, I came up with the idea of doing coconut substitutes with clay.
After a head count of orchids at home, we came up with 4. It turned out later it was five and that we had misplaced one of them.... To make a long story short, I did 4 "coconuts":
Picture taken on 5/7-2011
This was basically the last project during Spring term 2011. I actually had to "tiptoe" into the workshop after hours and quickly glaze them (at the same time as I could fetch my strawberry pot... hehe...). Did not take longer than 10 minutes, I believe... And then it was not easy to get them out after the "baking"...  But yesterday, I managed. My teacher is really wonderful and helpful! Incredible lady....
I used "brown" clay and put a very thin layer of cream colored glaze with dots. That combination (with a thin layer) normally gives some kind of brownish result, which it indeed did this time, too. They are darker in reality than on the picture (probably because of the flash).
Each coconut has got three holes for hanging them up in the trees and are rounded in the bottom. Though it is still possible to make them stand whenever necessary. Me very happy. Orchids are now going on vacation in the garden!

I have actually used some orchid moss or whatever that is, some orchid compost and a green thread to fix the orchids in the pots. This is how they looked like at the end of the story after a whole lot of fixing and tricking about with the thread (very unconfortable behaviour by the way)
29/7-2011
Fortunately, I have a big tree that can carry them without issues (or so I hope). So the next step was to hang them up. Not easy to find a suitable place (the tree is definitively not really "well combed") but at the end they have been up since beginning of August.
23/8-2011


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