Spring! with P, Q & U

Paige received this parcel at the Penland Post Office.  Pretty! and decorated for the season!

Plenty of postage pressed permanently in position for the phlight.

So what you can’t see is Pennsylvania.  I painted a map of the great state of Pennsylvania on the back side of the severed book cover you see above.  I thought the idea of Pennsylvania going to Paige and the Penland Post office was Perfect! I suggest that you check out the PO next your in the neighborhood.  You can also go to their web site (http://www.penlandpostoffice.org/) and learn about the building, the history of the region, the people that brought the area to life and future plans for the Post Office building.  It’s good to know it’s so well supported by the community.  It’s an important part of the community.

Acorns quivered quietly on their quest to reach the midwest.

The letter Q  was captured in a Spiderman lunchbox.  How could you know?  And what does Q have to do with acorns you may wonder?  In this box Paige listed all of the Quercus (oaks).  There are 27.  But that number can’t begin to compete with the number of species of sQuirrels. How many are there?  (This is the last question in the quiz …………………………….. 278!)

The Letter U came in the form of Umbilicaria.  Edible? Yes.  Unusual? U-betcha. Ugly? Well, that would be unkind.

So there you have it: P, Q &  U.  See you soon with J, W and Y.  The last 3 letters.

Step Right Up

An old slip and a sweet rendition of the letter “S”

How “S” was shipped, not so subtly and with stamps!

Sweetly synched slip with seeds

Slip with silver, sumac, sedge and sycamore.  The S box arrived, but I didn’t open it right away.  I know that there are only a couple of more letters headed this direction. Before I opened it, I savored its arrival, imagined the contents, then broke open the pod that was the packaging and explored the interior.   Was it really a slip?  What is sedge? Which is the sumac?What about that orange thread?  Maybe it once matched some of the seeds?  What IS the provenance of that slip?  It reminds me, I’ve wanted to recreate an old dress with seeds in the hem.  As if someone were transporting them clandestinely,  to save them for flourishing elsewhere.  Seeds are about potential.  So satisfying. Who isn’t optimistic about a collection of seeds.

Red and Violet

“R” (w)Rapped Rigidly and Redundantly with Red thread at Right Angles

So, inside the rectilinear red tin, rigidly (w)rapped, resides a multitude of Red objects heretofore reservedly resting in my studio.  My studio is a rather robust repository of recycled relics.  I’d be really happy to recount from whence they were rounded up and then share these raw materials with you.  To me they are not only red, but also rich and relevant …and probably redundant.  Read on…

One framed cabbage.

My first inclination was to make a video.  A violent video of viciously assaulted vegetables.  But I couldn’t bring myself to do it.  The cabbage was just so beautiful inside that I decided I had to try and capture that somehow.  So, I printed with it instead.  Here is a violet vegetable presented in a vintage frame.  Eh, voila!  My final letter.  My 13th.  Thank you Brassica Oleracea Capitata, I am happy that you could contribute. You are one very vibrant and beautiful vegetable.

The Home Stretch

Local specimen found in my local studio.

Further information for the herbarium.

Xanthorrhiza Simplicissma, my entry for the letter X.

Also know as Yellowroot and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Paige doesn’t have some of it growing in her neck of the woods.  Common and easy to propogate we know that it flourishes on both sides of the pond (your local pond and the one the Queen of England sometimes crosses.)  I wondered how I was going to pull off an entry with a real link to the letter X.  John Bartram wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised. (Although his specimen would have been a bit fresher, but not so long lasting.)

X just went out a couple of days ago.  It was accompanied by R and Q.  R, Q & S coming next!

Bountiful Blogging!

Larry has been very busy with deliveries. Here’s 3 from North Carolina.

Happiness Happiness Inside the I (eye) box.

Of Kourse!

Striped maple, poplar, hemlock, sourwood, oak, spice bush, locust, ironwood,dogwood, sassafras, maple, beech and sweet birch.

Magnificent metal markers on the M box.

Magical Milkweed!

Can you guess which letter? Isn’t the red luscious?

Inhale deeply…you can probably smell the orange and the oregano.

I know it’s a bunch for a single post…but here we are. Bountifully blogging!  One of my favorite parts of the process is just receiving the parcels.  I love the packages, the bundles, their possibilities. I love seeing the evidence of their travels, their tickets, their seat belts.  It is hard to just jettison their packaging.  So I used some to make a nest (see last post) and some I hold on to for raw materials for the next inspiration (3 letters to go for me!).

Inside the I box is a Happiness Happiness game (aka Double Happiness).  I asked some chinese friends if they know how to play. They said it was something maybe their parents played.  The skinny little cards with only images on them are so mysterious.  I am thinking I may have to confiscate them and re-imagine some of them for one of my last letters.  Maybe to  use with the Kentucky Coffee beans Paige sent in the G box.

The presentation of the Kindling in the K box is so sweet.  So specimen like.  Like a little id box you’d check  your work against in a lab.  The striped maple is my favorite.

As far as the boxes themselves, the M box so far is my favorite.  The leaves Paige has riveted to the lid of the busy-boy-tool-box are so beautiful and the scarification of the box itself is exquisite.  Great colors, great textures, great mixture.  Thanks Paige.  It’s nice to see some of your metal work in there!

There something about that red in the O box.  Rich.  Hearty. Alive.  Then there’s the inside with those little envelope boxes. Each has a lid.  Each has small treasures contained very delicately within. I love that the origami paper is used not for folding, but crinkled up. It makes a perfect packaging material.

Here’s to the new year! and the wrapping up of our box-sending.  We’ve decided we need to have all of our letters sent to each other by the end of February.  That would be next month.  I’ll be going down to N. Carolina with any luck at about that time.  We’ll be consulting about the next step: putting all of the boxes together, wrapping it up into a single  piece.  We’re thinking about drawers or suitcases as a container for the collection.  But don’t let’s get ahead of ourselves.  I currently have my sites on  R, X & V.

(Z)ipper trees and (D)etritus

Here’s the detritus “D” box designed dramatically with details of dance.

Viewing the specimens after opening the flap.

A new specimen for me, this Zipper Tree.

Looks like this one was grafted maybe….

Detritus is everywhere.  In fact maybe there’s more detritus than there is anything else.  Maybe the world is mostly detritus, but we’re just carefully identifying each of the piles so that they will feel less like “stuff” and we’ll feel more productive? In any event here’s some (stuff? productivity?) from my studio.  It adorns the letter “D” box.  Some fabric, some thread, some wire and pins and little tumble weeds.  It’s what has landed after everything else gets put away.

Zipper trees are not everywhere. This is the first one I’ve run across. Please let me know if you’ve seen them in your neck of the woods.

N is for the New Year….and an old Anacin tin

The letter N nestles nicely in the needles.

What is nestling?

Nasturtium seeds nudging one another and hiding a nickel.

So here we have the letter N.  I’ve just posted this yesterday to Paige.  My most local post office is in the back of a convenience store.  The guys there are so darn nice!  They weren’t going to be open after 12 noon on New Year’s Eve, but they realized they had to stay open until 2pm so that the big mail truck could come by and pick-up all the parcels.  I got there at about 2:30 and since the parcel truck hadn’t yet come by….they were still open! They are always in a good mood and they put up with my special requests for only using stamps, no meters.  I think next, I should get some photos and introduce them to you.

The very glamorous “G” box

These are really the most amazing seed pods I’ve ever seen.

Not only the plants, but their shadows were pretty enchanting too.

I’m assuming it’s a cone flower….wouldn’t you guess?

The glamorous, graceful and very generous “G” box was FULL!

The G box was absolutely abundant.  So many mysterious silhouettes. And lots of sweet fragrances, bergamot? sage? lavender? borage? And so many seeds!  Seed pods, seed heads, seeds.  What would the sub group in botany be called that studies the shape of seed pods?  These containers are so intriguing and so different from each other.  Why one shape over the next?  Maybe it’s because of the delivery system.  Fed Ex? UPS? USPS?

I’ll admit to them being more interesting than any of the shapes I’ve posted to Paige. Shapes, Silhouettes, Seeds. Three things to keep an eye on.

About the traveling

The G box arrived in Madison in brown paper

The Left-Handed Pencil was clad in a carnation tin

Waiting for Larry to post the letter “P”

Evidence of Farmer Fred’s Flight

The Thread and Thimbles have landed on Hannah Branch Rd!

So these are some of the ways that the parcels go back and forth.  Click on them for a larger view.  Some of the images don’t do justice to the size that the parcels are relative to the size of the mail box…the one they are leaving or the one they’re going to.  Paige had to actually go to the PO for the Left-Handed pencil.  Maybe she should consider a bigger mail box?  I’m glad she painted it red.  (But I hope that doesn’t mean people use it for target practice….)

E is for (for)evergreen

Addressing Evergreens

Evergreen “Contents”

Fragrant Evergreens!

So November brought evergreens from Burnsville to Madison. Mountain Evergreens.  Green Evergreens.  Fragrant Evergreens.  In an tin canister.