sore throat, birds, fishes,pots.

G'Day,
I have strained my throat. Screaming at Rufus, my naughty Jack Russell pup who had the baby English blackbird chick in his mouth. He dropped it and it scuttled into the back corner of the shed. I had to practically unpack the garden shed to get up in the corner to rescue it, with much swooping and panicking from it's mummy bird. It didn't look very old to be out of the nest so Pete climbed the ladder to return it. To get it back into the nest we had to cut back a lot of the prickly climbing rose that is up in the tree. Anyway after two tries we gave up because it just kept jumping back out and falling to the ground again. So Rufus and Boo, my cat, are confined to the house for a couple of days to give it a chance to learn to fly properly. Let's hope. It is down under the foliage beneath the tree and mummy bird is still feeding it so it must be O.K.
Yesterday I spent the morning cleaning and refilling the fish pond out the back. I had seen what I thought was about 7 fish left after the heron's visit during the winter but when I counted them when I returned them to the pond there were 11 of them. So that was better than I thought. The heron got less than half of them. The pond looks great at the moment, the water is clear as crystal. The fish look great, and as if they are suspended effortlessly in air. The water version of birds except even more graceful. From my backyard observations there is a leader fish. It grows bigger than the rest of the fish and leads them around the pond. The general. In the past I have observed that if the leader fish dies another fish grows bigger than the rest and takes over the leaders position. All of my fish were born at the same time. The heron took their parents a few years ago and the eggs in the pond were able to develop without being cannibalized. I don't feed my fish they have their own little ecosystem going where they live on insects and algae. I do occasionally give them a bit of dry dog food. The round brown bits float and the fishies entertain me by nibbling on it and as they nibble, it moves the bit of dog food around the pond and the fish follow it. I call it playing soccer. Looks funny. Maybe it's me that's funny. Funny ha ha, or funny strange?
Today I also made a slab pot, I decorated the slab with a sea theme. Then I did two platters in a square mold with the same decoration. I used the clay I got recently from Canberra . It is called Walker's stoneware no.2. It is groggy and should fire to a mid brown with specks. The sample of fired clay I saw had a nice shino glaze on it. I had a play with shino glaze a while back as the effects you can get appeal to me. It came out a thick glossy white without the orange showing through. Nice but not what I wanted it to do. Any suggestions appreciated. I will do some other recipe tests.
I went to the stained glass class last night and my first panel is coming together nicely. The colors I chose work well. All the bits are fitting nicely. Maybe next week I will get up to the bit where I melt the bits together. I am going to try a mirror with stained glass around it next. If I design it myself I can work with the antique glass samples that my old friend Betty gave me about a year ago. I promised her that I would use them for something nice and not just waste them. I also have in my shed a few good bits of mirror to use, from when we renovated our bathroom a few years ago. Should save me some money.
The person who was annoying me at work seems to have settled down. She is going on holidays for a week and I won't have to see her for a while. Bloody good timing I reckon!
Tat's about all. Bye Love Linda.