Accordion pocket seed books

Vegetable seed book parts

The accordion books were made with a pocket designed to hold either vegetable or flower seeds.  I used 90 lb Stone henge 22 x 30 sheets of paper for the 6 1/2" by 21" strips.  I folded 1 1/2" of the paper strip up to create the pockets for the seeds.  Then accordion folded the strip to create 6 pages.

Seed packets from different vendors vary in size, as do the actually seeds.  So before making any books I made a test accordion out of card stock.  This helped me determine the final size to cut the paper to hold the heirloom vegetable or flower seeds packets I was using.

A foot of garden jute was attached to the inside of the back cover.  After the book is assembled the jute is used to tie the books closed.

Vegetable book front and back covers

For the vegetable seed book covers I used sections of a Jardin vegetable paper.  This colorful paper seemed like the perfect cover for a book containing heirloom vegetable seeds.

For the flower seed books I used paper with a flower design that can be colored.  The black and white covers were a perfect complement to the ink illustrations I added to the back of the flower seed books.

On the back side of the accordion pages I added ink illustrations featuring either a flower or vegetable garden to match the seeds.  Each type of garden illustration is a unique design, but has similar plant elements.

These little books make great gifts for friends that like to garden!

A place to sit

One day I did a quick sketch of the edge of Mertha's cabin.  The cabin looks down on the ring of adirondack chairs we often gathered at before and after dinner.  I only included a bit of the cabin, focusing on what I believed was the edge of the forest.  The journal entry was to be about the flow between the hardscape of man made and softness of nature.  Shapes that define and complement each other.

I came back to find the forest had moved!  Actually the forest had never been right up against the cabin.  There was a very overgrown terrace between the cabin and the forest.  I decided to finish the sketch using one of the sepia topic pens I had recently purchased.  I liked the look so much I decided not to add any watercolors.

One of the other classes that week was Landscape Design: Through the eyes of Jens Jensen, taught by Bob Grese.  As one of their class projects they had revealed the terrace.  From the now usable space you can look out across the central campus.  The students voted to call it 'Mertha's terrace', after Mertha Fulkerson, Jens Jensen's long time associate who kept The Clearing going after his death.

Alien oaks in the parking lot

This oak (Quercus lyrata) does not turn bright red, or day glow yellow.  The green leaves fade to a yellowish brown and fall.  It wasn't the leaves that caught my eye, but the acorns.  They are large, deep red brown and have an amazing thorny cap.  The cap covers just about the entire nut of an immature acorn, hence the name 'Overcup Oak'.  As the acorn matures the cap peals back from nut, but they do not drop free.  The ground under the trees are littered with these large acorns and the strange yellow-brown leaves.

The leaves remind me of an insect or strange alien monster.  I think it is the combination of  the leaf shape and the way the curled and contorted leaves scuttled along the patio.