Sunday, August 26, 2007

One more Paper Studio BoyFriend

Alrighty, then...I'm almost done with posting about our boy friends.
Today was a papermaking pulping day--making chocolate pulp and cleaning up lots o' stuff from our marathon papermaking adventures of late.

I've needed to tidy up our papermaking courtyard for weeks but once it started being 110 degrees for days on end, I just didn't feel up to it and I swear piles of stuff breed and multiply in the night! However, with several more days of marathon papermaking looming large, I needed to get out there and rinse off about 100 pellons to get ready for our next round of papermaking.
While I was out there I decided to tackle moving the 150 lb bale of hesperaloe (for papermaking) that was plunked in the middle of the courtyard which ultimately became the bottom of the mountain of crap. I'm only 5'2" and the bale was about as tall as me when I turned it upright--I succeeded in dragging it over to the wall although from the looks of the bale compared to my scratched up arms, perhaps it won that round.
From this shot, you'd think I bagged a ton of garbage...wrong! This is not garbage but fabulous banana fiber that Larry from the arts and cultural center brought us for papermaking.
Banana tree leaf plant fiber makes the most lovely paper! Now at least is in one place and I believe this fiber IS multiplying in volume.
Once I got the courtyard relatively organized, I looked at my planting beds which have totally gone amok--come out, come out, come out where every you are!--my bird of paradise plants are buried under nut grass that completely taken over. I thought to myself, Vynnie the gardener, would be quite dismayed at the sad state of affairs of the whole situation. Especially since he and Robin added the great pots to one side of the courtyard. But after being outside for 2 hours in 109 degree temps cleaning pellons, wrestling with the hesper bale, moving tables and corralling all the banana fiber, I decided the weeding could wait till next week.

It was like the universe was eavesdropping. When I got home this evening, I got an email saying that our good friend, Vynnie the Gardner is in the latest issue of Popular Mechanics! I thought that magazine was about cars....they should have a subtitle that says "we are NOT just about cars". Anyway, Vynnie McDaniels is there on page 64--The Xeriscape Artist and he definitely is!We met Vynnie through art functions, not gardening (we just pester him with planting questions now). Robin and Vynnie will be in an upcoming Paper Studio video talking about visual journaling. They have coordinated our October Under the Covers journaling show for the past 3 years and are prolific visual journalers, drawers while being the most amazingly creative and fun people. The Under the Covers 3 show will be up from October 1 - 31, 2007 so stay tuned. Congrats Vynnie on the Pop Mech press!