There are certain moments that I prepare for as growing things spring forth…
Mostly, collecting.
It's the spring/summer collecting that helps makes winter tolerable, me thinks.
I like to collect all the roses I can, to hang dry.
Plus herbs.
Flowers that won't hang dry, or keep as such, get pressed into thick books.
Ever so many books filled with pressed petals around here.
They are so thin and exquisitely ghostly, those dried pressed blooms…
Memories from the garden, from glorious warm days.
Delicate sheets of paper feathers are what they seem like.
Leaves too.
I love checking up on them months later…
Perfect little smashed treasures.
Blues turn purple, between dictionary pages.
But every so often, a little blue remains.
The colors of nature.
Unreal.
If you find a big old encyclopedia, or any thick sturdy book really, pick it up.
That would be perfect for such collecting.
It's a great thing, pressing flowers.
You can also date your pages.
I also collect dry flowers to put in big glass jars.
It's so uplifting to see great big jars of dried flowers hanging around all year.
I love foraging around for things to dry.
This winter, it was so lovely to have basil, lavender, rosemary, oregano, mint and more hanging around.
Just as I am about to run out of dried herbs, here comes spring with gifts.
Hooray!
If you don't have a pot rack, or other contraption to hang herbs and flowers from, you can do what I did here.
Sorta make your own lightweight version.
Take 4 branches (I used dry apricot tree branches), 2 short (same size) and 2 long (same size). Then tie them together with twine, short pieces as ends, long pieces as sides, and voila…
A perfect place to hang herbs and flowers.
I saw some basil sprout the other day.
I am sooo excited!!
The climbing roses have more and more buds coming, and things are getting so pretty out there.
I just want to stand under them, and absorb.
But I find that, I have a hard time fully absorbing wonderful moments.
The excitement gets me, or something?
I could stand there for hours, and still want more.
You?
Well, off I go.
Oh…
I spotted the first big rose.
I tell you, I can't think of anything that makes me happier.
The last few years I added more rose bushes to the garden.
They look soooo good this year so far.
We pruned the 30+ year old rose bushes to my height or less, and one is taller than the house with all the new leaves now.
I can hardly wait for the rose explosion.
I am giddy and spastic about the whole thing.
The rose colors we have are…
Coral, red, hot pink, candy pink, purple, lavender, white, nectarine, peach, orange, maybe yellow.
One root I bought and planted in fall didn't make it, and I don't know yet if it was the yellow.
Little makes me more excited than spring.
I hope you cold areas are warming up.
Are ya?
ps: Relistening to the new CocoRosie single…
Vanessa:
I adore dried flowers. Especially roses. I see some of your pressed flowers are morning glories. Paper thin and magical. I can’t wait to see all the beautiful photos of your roses when they’ve bloomed. You are living in a wonderland, for sure.
xoxo
Kim
Gerushia’s New World
First I have to tell you that I got Freya today! She is sooo cute, I can hardly stand it! I absolutely LOVE her! I think she will enjoy her new home. She has lots of company on the shelves around her. I’m sure everyone’s filling her in on what’s what around here!
I like how transparent your flowers are in the book. I can’t wait to see flowers around here. It was 40 today & may hit 60 tomorrow! It’s supposed to be nice, in the 50s next week but rain for like 4 days. I know, it’s good for the plants!
April showers bring May flowers, I guess.
How beautiful.
still c-c-c-cold, first time today for coffee outdoors, winter coat and knitted scarf on, no gloves thanks to warm coffee cup, and still it brings hope.
I love pressed flowers too Vanessa. I have to tell you my experience when you mentioned the color change it brought this to mind. In Alaska here we have this fantastic and magical Blue Himalayan poppy that grows prolific in my yard in several places. I had the idea to do some paper art and make fairy wings out of the pedals as they are shaped perfectly. Only thing is they dry to such a dull color I was wondering if there is something I can put on them to retain color? Are you familiar with anything like that? I also dried lots of roses but then really didn’t know how to use them later.
Nan PS was just using your cards the other day, love your work!!
I was just looking at our roses and thinking soon they will begin to bud. Right now it is leaf time. I just love the spring garden. How fun to press the flowers for later discovery in books and in a jar. I need to do more of that.
I can’t wait for your roses to bloom! It’s still in the 30-40 degree range with snow, but under all that my strawberry plants have lots of new growth. That makes me so happy 🙂 Now I just need some bird netting so my family actually gets to eat them this year…
I hope Matty is continuing to do well! ~Lisa
Vanessa,
I feel like you could have a May Day celebration to defy all others. If you happened to have a maple tree nearby that you could harvest for the maypole wood, and multicolored streamers, it would be glorious! Just place it near all the blooming roses (once they start popping up) and you’ll be set 🙂 Since we don’t have a garden here, it’s nice to have access to this virtual outlet where I can see what all the rose madness is about for you Arizona dwellers 🙂
Just visited Sonoma, and it’s amazing. Rolling green pastures, sheep and cows grazing everywhere, the sky unreal covered in clouds and mountains…it looks like the Shire 🙂 Plus it’s nice and cool there. For us, well…it’s hot. 🙁 I’m not a heat fan at all. Oh well…
Your dried flowers are amazing and I love them all. I’ve dried them in the past and know what you mean by how beautifully transparent they get while being pressed. It’s as though the faeries had something to do with them (I secretly know that they do). I wish our flowers would start to bloom. Today it is suppose to get up to 55 degrees so there is hope.
Happy weekend to you all.
I simply cannot wait to see your heirloom rose bush in bloom. I do believe it is The Most Beautiful Rose I have ever seen. Oh so sweet, pressed flowers. As a teen I did that while listening to Laura Nyro. Oh my, that does seem like a lifetime ago!
I still have a gift saved for you from my old home…waiting at my Bad Alice’s house. It’s very YOU and gypsy and all things magical. One day we must meet for tea.
**blows kisses** Deb
I loved this post Vanessa-because of the images of faded beauty and because it made me think of pressing flowers when I was young. It also made me think what a lovely surprise might be waiting in the pages of a found book. I tend to keep interesting flowers and seed heads in vases as I love the papery thinness of them and the faded but still there colour. I also sometimes stick a little remnant of some special ones in journals. I hove not pressed any for years though and you have made me want to. I have just the book-a thick but quite small old dictionary that I bought because it has finger spaces with red ink and the letter written to allow for quick referencing-it looks good as an object and now will be perfect for this.
x
Love the idea with the branches. That’s really smart. I hung my collected herbs for incense burning on my chandelier as I couldn’t find another place. But I think I will try your idea this year.
Maybe you want to have a look at my chandelier:
http://mapletrueheart.blogspot.de/2012/10/drying-plants-on-chandelier.html
Don’t you just want to twirl and twirl when the basil comes up. I so luv visiting here…that’s all 🖤
smashed and treasure…who knew I’d ever see those 2 words together in a POSITIVE sentence!
It is warm in the south and we’ve been gardening…I already need to harvest my basil and I still have cubes in the freezer! My arugula is lovely and my wildflowers seedlings are doing just fine. I made a little turtle topiary the other day…turned out so cute I may have to make another. But now my attention is turned to an old birdbath someone threw away. It is screaming for me to mosaic it and put it in a corner of the yard……wishing you a wonderful spring!
*Le Sigh* – it’s all so pretty, and I’m so wanting to find some climbing roses to put in my garden. I’m looking for either Black Magic, Don Juan, or George Burns. I’d even take a creamy white and pink blush variety, which sounds so ethereal. Tomorrow I’m going to a nursery to find some….arrrrgh/lol!
Also, Coco Rosie —-> <3
I have always had a weakness for pressing flowers. I use to make pressed flower pictures with them…pansies, maiden hair fern. I have an old vintage cook book that I put some four leaf clovers in to be pressed…I am sure they are still in there from several years ago! I have always wanted a black rose, as one of the original stories of Rose Red and Snow White (the two sisters)there was a story about Beauty and the Beast (being Rose Red, I think?) anyway, the story goes that it was a black rose that the seaman father took from the Beast’s garden back home to the daughter who had requested it…and you know the rest of the story how the daughter had to serve the Beast because the father had taken the rose. I think there are black iris’s but not black roses. And some pansies come close to being black also. There is just a mystic about the darker flowers…must be the Gothic Victorian mind-set I tend to visualize and live in my dreams…
Miss Teresa, I will send you some little black roses!!! They are not
black when fresh, but so deep red velvet, and they dry black. We have a
wild rose bush that I always forget about. The previous owners must have
planted it 40 years ago or 30+. Because I have been here for almost 12
years, 6 full time, and Lovee was here 10 years before that, or 15?
So, anyhow, this rambling rose bush gifts the most blood red velvet
roses…..
In fact, one rose bloomed yesterday, and Lovee and I were dissecting it, in
awe at the darkest velvet redness of it…
Red Velvet turning towards night,
Tea time with a Paris wife.
All in one small cafe,
Pastires and drinks for the day.
Then who should arrive and come in,
Wearing celebrations with a grin.
Delivered in prose from head to toes,
The most exquisit bouquet of Red velvet Rose.
And behind that with the bells a ding,
A bouquet splash all colors Arizona Roses sing.
Welcome, welcome spring…the afterlife does too ring.
It’s funny that you should post this because today I was sorting out parts of my house, when I found a pink pressed flower in an extremely large tome-like book about folklore. I know it’s from years ago. I wish I’d written down when and were I found it.
Ooooo! Thank you! I will love for you to send me some dried black roses!!! Then I can pretend I was Rose Red!!! I will have to find a magic see-through glass box to treasure and place them in.
Fairy tale magic for sure ******
love,
Miss Teresa
YAY! I love having something like this to do. Collect some dark
roses for you. YAY!!
Blog: http://www.aFancifulTwist.com
Website: http://www.VanessaValencia.com
In a message dated 4/7/2013 4:37:06 P.M. US Mountain Standard Time,
I love flowers. I never thought of saving the dried flowers in a jar. The jars full of flowers you showed looked so pretty. I am going to try that, Lady V.
Oh so beautiful! I’ve always loved pressing flowers, still have some books of it from my childhood. Still not warm here yet but at least the sun has appeared yay!
I like the transparent morning glory best of all!
I really love dried flowers. I picked a couple of the ones near my house the other day in hopes of using them for a future creative project.
Oh our dried flowers, leaves and herbs are so lovely! I have encased leaves in beeswax to preserve their color and shape. I use a quilting iron to drip the wax on, then use the iron itself to smooth the wax out. It really works. Plus, it smells rather nice. 🙂