This summer has been very very busy. I could add about 6 more “very”s to that sentence to make it more accurately reflect my feelings, but you would be bored reading it and I think   you get my drift with just  the two.

I started the summer with a getting ready for a big garden tour, and that is how I am ending it as well. In between there was worrying about the rabbit damage, weeding , deadheading, and watering ( boy was there ever watering!).We did lots of day trips, and a few overnight beachy things , we visited lots of people and attended cookouts and pool parties. All in all it was pretty fun. Somehow, someway, in amidst all the chaos, there were flowers. Lots. A bounty you might say.

And how do I know this? The flower presses are groaning with the weight of layer upon layer of the pressed blooms and the heavy books that help weight them down before they go to the big press in the cellar.

Even on the busiest of days I have to stop here and there in the garden to grab a few leaves, blossoms or seedheads to get in the presses or I won’t have enough material for all the Pressed Flower Workshops I have coming up starting in September and going right through next May. They are stacked up from the very latest mums on the top all the way down to the spring blooming clematis on the bottom.

They are a real treasure , and one that I will now get to enjoy workshop by workshop , as I go through them to decide what to bring when.

Often , when I open a folded sheet of tissue paper and see what lies in between it’s folds, I  actually sort of squeal out loud ( just a little) when I see what lies there. It is like going back in time through the year of my garden, and often it is the only time I really got to enjoy whatever floral material is peeking out at me.

Dianthus? I remember you! You lit up the pink garden for weeks while I was spreading compost and mulch. Pretty geranium flowers?  You carried on through  the back 40 for the whole of spring while I was out caging clematis plants off from the bunnies, and you will make  a new layer in the fall section after the re-bloom you are so graciously giving me now.

Queen Annes Lace,  we picked you after Erin’s first driving lesson from the sides of the parking lot she was circling, and then the girls and I  spent a pleasurable afternoon setting up cups filled with food coloring and watching you drink  up  the colored water and transform before our eyes.

And on and on it goes, paper by paper book by book, a virtual time capsule of the blooming year here in and around the Burrow.

For those of you who will be attending a workshop in the coming year, now is a great time to press from your garden. Cosmos, roses, dahlias, black eyed susans,ornamental grass plumes and blades, artemesia, fall colored leaves, the list goes on and on. As we get closer to a frost (gasp!) you will also feel far less guilty about picking the perfect bloom to press ,it’s time in the garden is limited anyway.

For quick tutorial on pressing methods click here and get started on your own garden time capsule.