On the other foot...

Farmdoc and I live in a house with a polished concrete floor. This is excellent for the passive solar values of the building: in summer, when the eaves keep the sun out, we are cool, and in winter the floor traps the warmth. An unfortunate side effect, however, is that when we drop something it smashes.

We discovered this early. The first thing to go, the week we moved in, was a small pottery butter dish, which broke neatly into two pieces. We were able to glue these back together and the dish remains in use until today, with only a pale scar as a reminder of its brush with death.

Another early victim was not so repairable. It was a heavy cast iron wok, which had been perfect on our wood stove, but which lost its handles in the crash. We couldn't use it any more but we couldn't let it go either. We passed it to our artist friend Annie Zon, who works with discarded materials, in the hope that she could make something of it.

She did. Her solution was simple. She found an old pot plant stand and placed our wok on it. Voila: one bird bath, which sits outside our living room window and is enjoyed equally by us and the birds.

When Farmdoc broke a platter recently he kept himself from being too upset about it by passing it on to Annie. He thought she and her fellow artist Janet could reincarnate our china shards into one of their mosaic pieces. We'd be able to admire the work in their garden when we visited.

Annie had other ideas:


Our platter has returned home as a pair of pottery and china feet.

One foot is encased in a ballet slipper, while the other has bare toes and proudly bears its brand name on its heel:

The platter was precious to us but now I'm glad it broke, because it was able to become something we will treasure much more: a piece of art made by a dear and talented friend. Now we only have to work out how not to drop it.