pressed into service

when i started still blog in 2012, i would always take my camera and white paper with me on vacations. i liked how the daily practice of STILL made me more attentive to my surroundings. but my camera is heavy, and i eventually tired of always being weighted down with equipment. although the increased attentiveness i still savored and didn’t want to give up. so i have evolved instead to gathering bits and pieces i can carry home to photograph later, and to tucking leaf and flower specimens into the pages of the books i am reading or my journal. i have taken up the strange evening ritual of sitting on my journals in order to press the specimens i collected during that days outings. today i took out my current journal to do some collaging, and out drifted a small gardens’ worth of specimens from my last two trips to california. these are not colors one typically finds in the upper midwest–saturated fuchsias and citrusy oranges. they feel like intruders to me being here in this blog of mostly muted colors of the hardwood and boreal forests of the north. but still blog is about being present, wherever i am, and taking notice of the extraordinary in the ordinary. so today you get to join me on the coast of california–one of the worlds’ truly great landscapes. i hope you enjoy your time there.

assorted pressed californian botanicals