I return from our trip my head filled with flowers. At night, in the darkness of our tent, against the darkness of the underside of my closed eyelids, movie-style, fields of shadow daisy-flowers bloom. Has the brightness of their daytime presence – fields of orange, yellow and blue – burnt after-images on my retinas, I wonder? My inner projector continues the spectacle well after the flowers on the ground, starved of the rays of the sun, have closed up their petals for the night.
Variegated nasturtiums growing in our garden make me dizzy with delight. Inspiration for ink-swirl marbled endpapers for a book both green in content and style?
It’s on this note that I wish to say farewell as we venture off on another of our camping adventures, this time through the flowers of Namaqualand, to Johannesburg and the Jozi Book Fair. Back in the second half of September.
The Green Roses were invited to Monkey’s Wedding which I read to a spell-bound audience. After looking at the embroideries and the bag of threads that was the medium for the art work, the green roses addressed an envelope to the monkey-bride, drew a picture of her embellished in lace and wrote her a letter. Perhaps it was to ask her to invite them to the next wedding, perhaps it was to urge her to get a groom next time. Whatever the case, it was a celebration of some note.
At the Green Rose Club we rolled silver balls of water on nasturtium leaves. Sliding balls from one leaf to another turned into a game between friends. We ended off by eating our leaves! Great to add a peppery zing to a salad or for a sore throat. Must remember to bring the flowers when they emerge to show the green roses. We can munch on them too.
The Green Rose Club was busy today. There was magic when we made leaf rubbings using wax candles and green food colouring. ( Green is our favourite colour!) There were concepts to chew on: Wax- resist, botany, Carl Linneaus and his naming of plants (taxonomy). We had fun swopping our names around as if we were plants. We thought up nicknames for Bauhinia leaves, all starting with B: butterfly tree, book leaves, bum or bottom trees, bible leaves.
At the Green Rose club we filled a matchbox with the new words we learned.
To make a matchbox book, take a length of till slip and wind it around a ruler to score. Then fold it into a zigzag. When children have completed the writing the paper gets glued into the matchbox. Glue paper on the cover and give the matchbox book a title.
The Green Rose Club is a reading club I run with about fifteen 8-year-olds at Rosmead Primary School. Today we discovered that the correct way to pronounce Seuss is so that it rhymes with ‘voice’. We also ate green eggs and ham with relish!
Found and lost
Rubbish or what? A plastic packet headed for the dustbin. Inside are masses of fragile folded embroidery patterns annotated in Greek ( yes, Greek) some dated to the 1920’s.
Inspiration for some impromptu painting/collage. The one on the left is “Plinth”, the one on the right, “Swept”.