Art and Nature

16 days....That is all that is left until the Celebration of Seagrove Potters. If you haven't gotten your Gala tickets, go directly to the web site and buy them on line!

I am working away on some new designs. Here are a couple that I have just finished. This is such a busy time of the year for all of us here in Seagrove, and of course all artists and craftspeople.

Yesterday morning our dog was at the pond barking like mad. Wes went down and thought he saw two beavers swimming around, and I joined him. Of course, Bacchus launched himself into the hyacinth filled water, the lab in him suddenly kicking into full gear. He swam in circles all around the pond, completely oblivious to the fact that these "beavers" were more adept in the water than he was. I was afraid he'd run out of steam in the hyacinth and go down. We finally coaxed him out and back into the garage. We were thrilled! Beavers eat water vegetation, and we have a ton of it! The water hyacinth is very pretty and horrendously invasive! (And people will pay $2-3 per plant for it, in nurseries.) We thought perhaps our answer to getting rid of it had come....two cool resident beavers to clean out the pond!

After a bit more research on line, after Wes saw them on the bank cuddling and noticed that they had long straight tails rather than big flat ones, we discovered that they were a pair of NA River Otters. That had been my thought when I first saw them swimming, they reminded me of the otters I watched in the Shed Aquarium, years ago. River otters are not vegetarians, they eat fish and sometimes small mammals. We had about 200 small koi put into the pond earlier this year (though we soon acquired a resident Great Heron right after, so there may not have been any left in there). I don't know if they got any koi, and I seriously doubt they wiped out our huge mole and vole population. They may not have been really keen on seeing 5 of us on the hill by the pond armed with cameras and binoculars, while they cuddled together, wrapped arond each other. I don't know what the deciding factor was, where they came from, or were they were going, but this morning as soon as it was light I went looking. No otters to be seen. We were thrilled though to have their 24 hour visit and hope that they'll be back to see us one day.