Dear Liza,
I like keeping garden journals. They let me keep track of what happens in the garden and when it happens, so I can learn from each year and get better year by year.
But I also like to make them creative, so I’ve used a different format every year. This year I am re-using a movie list book. It has nice roomy format which I really like.
However, re-using a book means I need to do something in each page to cover, obscure, or otherwise change the illustration that is there, unless I find a page with movies about plants.
This page came close. It was a watercolor from the movie “Amelie”, where the garden gnome goes on some adventures. I wanted to keep the gnome.
I cut some junkmail paper to cover the non-gnome parts, gave it a blurry garden-y paint job, and glued it down. The inside of a security envelope got some darker paint, and I had the basis for a decent page. I gave the gnome himself a little more yellow, since his blue didn’t go with my yellow-ish green.
I found a few nice greens in a handout from our Portland Art Museum, and cut leaves and stems. Not bad, but flat and boring. Auntie Bridgett brought some darker greens from her collage box. Better.
And finally, I cut flowers from some pink and blue paper from the same museum handout. Now the gnome looks right at home in his garden, and in my garden journal.
Creating and solving these artistic challenges everyday makes my brain so happy!
Love,
Grandma Judy
Dear Liza 