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5-4-07 The spring weather here has run to
extremes. Late March gave us two weeks in the mid 80's, highly
unusual. Plants thrived, perhaps thinking that summer was upon them,
and they made a rush toward blooming. Then on April 6th we had
a half inch of snow. That was
followed by five nights of temperatures that hovered at 20 degrees.
The month that followed that showed just how much damage this did to the
plants. The freeze was too much for young plants and they simply died,
but for the most part, established plants survived.
Daylilies were burned. They
fell over, but came back out through
the dying leaves, though it took them a good three weeks before they made
any effort to do so. The hostas
froze to the ground. Over the next few weeks,
they rotted with a putrid odor.
Now, a month later, they're still
not as large as they were when they froze. Some plants, such as
the sedum, lost bits and pieces,
and resprouted from what was left.
But the damage to tree leaves was extensive and mind boggling. When
the freeze hit, most had new leaves and were blooming. The oaks lost
every leaf, every catkin, and now, a full month later,
some are still bare, some
just beginning to put out tiny leaves.
It's so strange to see bare trees here in
May. Oaks, poplars, sweetgum, mulberries were all killed back to bare
branches. The Bradford pears were in full leaf.
At least 80% of their leaves froze.
Three weeks later, it was like fall here when the wind blew, the leaves
falling and covering the ground. The Japanese maple was in full leaf.
Every leaf froze and every newly
grown branchlet froze. But as time passed, it became obvious that
the damage was more extensive than
that. The bark was full of moisture and this froze, and branches
as thick as two inches have died. Today,
a full month after the freeze, the
maple looks little different. It has only bee in the past few days
that a few small leaves have
begun to sprout well back into the tree and on the trunk. It seems
only the largest limbs on the lower level of branches have survived.
Nothing is showing at all on the upper level. It's going to be one
really weird looking Japanese maple if it makes it through this year.
I've spent the last week in the flowerbeds - removing, trimming, dividing
and replanting - and the beds beginning to come back into shape now.
One good thing did come from all of this. The privet hedge, which
needed to be cut a month ago, froze and saved me the trouble.
I checked it today, and it will be a
good while yet before it needs cutting. It's an ill wind....
5-5-07 I'm tending to my neighbor's flowerbeds
temporarily. The beds have wild garlic in abundance. George
doesn't seem to see the need to fight garlic. Yes, it does go away,
but before it does, it grows and multiplies, then comes back fivefold the
next year. While he was away, I thought I'd snatch the chance to rid
the bed of the tall garlic wands. And of course, being a papermaker,
doing this provides me with fodder for paper, so
I pulled a vat full. You can see
from the shot how large the garlic is.
Some of the bulbs approach commercial
garlic in size. Okay, so I exaggerate, but trust me, the odor is
definitely on a par. I doubt there is much fiber in any of it, but if
there is, it will be in the lower section, so I cut the bulb and the upper
section off, discarded those and kept
the
section just above the bulb. Now I have to find the 100' extension
cord. I'm not about to cook this stuff anywhere near the house.
5-7-07 It was afternoon before I could put
the wild garlic on to cook, and by then
the pot I had cut up the day before was rank. (I keep referring to
the plants as "wild garlic," that's what they're called here, but according
to the taxonomy sites, they're field garlic, Allium vineale.)
As an aside, my favorite pot has a glass
lid and I love it! It's so easy to keep an eye on what's going on
inside, and being about to see through the lid has save more than one
boil-over. It was really surprising how long the plant material took
to cook. I had figured it would take around an hour and a half, but it
was a full two and a half hours before it was done. Even then, there
were some interior sections that concerned me.
They were easy enough to pick out by
color and texture. They're on the right. The fully cooked
stuff is on the left. I processed the well cooked garlic in a blender
and was surprised at the amount of fiber
and how smooth the pulp is. Though there wasn't time today to pull
sheets, I'm reasonably sure the pulp will pull well and make a solid sheet.
I went ahead and processed the tougher material and it worked up quite well,
but it took about twice as long and is much lighter in color. Failed
to take a picture of that, though I will before pulling. The biggest
surprise was that the stuff didn't stink while cooking and the pulp has very
little garlic odor. This is good because it's stored in my
refrigerator until I have time to get it into the vat.
Back to the top
5-10-07 Finally got around to fooling with
the garlic pulp, but I did forget to take a picture of the tougher material.
Why? When I pulled a test sheet of the more tender stuff, the color
was lousy. My mind went off working with that problem. To look
like anything, it was going to have to be bleached, so I just mixed both
pulps without thinking and bleached away. Ah well.... I had
intended to pull swatches from the garlic pulp using a divided mould/deckle,
but the pulp wouldn't release from the removable netting. I did a test
with a heat shrink screen and it released from that perfectly, so I ended up
pulling 8.5"x11" sheets. I'll cut swatches from that. While the
bleached garlic pulp was nice enough, I wanted something a little more, so I
mixed cooked Kentucky bluegrass with it, just enough to give the paper some
character. I'm well pleased with the results, both of paper quality
and appearance. The paper
pulls thin and rattles
beautifully. Thin paper it difficult to shoot because the background
always shows through and becomes a part of the picture. This sheet was
shot while lying on a sheet of davey board, and see...the
gray of the the board showed
through. Backlighting gives
a better idea of what it
looks like. Toward the end of the pulling, I just dumped the rest
of the bluegrass in the vat and pulled sheets.
Nice!
5-12-07 Did a miniature basket demo at the
Artisan Center today. Lots of people, lots of fun. I can't think
of any place that treats demonstrators better. They carry my stuff in,
treat me to all the coffee I want, pay for my lunch, help me pack up and get
stuff back to the van and then pay me nicely on top of all that.
Excellent venue. The crowd is always nice, too. Knowledgeable
people who are interested in the crafts. Had one really neat thing
happen today. One of the visitors to the Center was Kathryn Clark from
Twin Rocker. I'd met her once before when she and Howard did a lecture
at Berea College, but we had a good visit today. Talked paper and
people and their plans for Twin Rocker. An excellent visit.
Thoroughly enjoyed her.
5-15-07 I'm involved in an international
swatch swap on the
Yahoo
papermaking list, and the garlic/bluegrass paper I made on the 10th will
be one set, but I wanted to do another set that is a little special to me.
Earlier this month I wrote about the cold weather in April that
froze my hostas to the ground.
Well, they rotted, at least the leaves did, but the stems dried out and were
bleached by the sun to a lovely, pristine white. When I cleaned the
rotten stuff out the bed so new leaves could form, I noticed that the stems
were still solid. Often the fibers we use for papermaking don't form
until plants mature a bit, and I questioned whether there were usable fibers
in these stems, but it wouldn't cost me much to find out. Cleaning
them before cooking was a pill because bits and pieces of mulch were stuck
to the stems, but for the most part, those washed out after soaking.
After cutting, cooking for an hour and a half, then blending, the stems make
a delightful pulp with far more fiber than I expected and served perfectly
as a base pulp for a special inclusion. After the freeze I had
harvested a number of frozen tree leaves, and among them were
these tiny oak leaves. The
leaf part only measures something like 3/4" to 1" long, perfect for
including in a swatch. I used a
homemade deckle with a net
screen, pulling eight swatches at a time. The only problem I ran into
was that I was pulling so thin, it difficult to judge how much pulp was on
the screen. I pulled a base sheet, added the leaves, then pulled a
very fine layer over that.
Most of them came out perfectly. I think there were eight that
were thinner than I wanted, but they're still okay.
5-17-07 The Berea International Festival
is Friday through Saturday. I promised to play photographer on Friday
for the Arts Council and do a hands-on paper demo on Saturday. If
you're anywhere in the area, stop by College Square on Saturday, say hey and
pull a few sheets of paper with me.
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5-19-07 Today was the outside
paper demo, and when I got up, it was 38 degrees! This is
unheard of here in mid May! Sheesh. Fortunately, the sun
quickly warmed things up and it turned out to be a glorious day.
By 10 AM when the demo started, I was ready to come out of my
sweatshirt. The crowd was good and people more than willing to
stick hands in the vat to pull their own paper. I like for them
to take home dry sheets rather than wet, crumpled ones, makes a far
better impression about paper and hand papermaking. In order
to do that, I use a pulp that can be ironed dry without shrinking and
warping. This time it
was cotton rag with cooked bluegrass inclusions. They pulled the
sheets, foot pressed them between newspapers and boards, then ironed
them. It's a quick process that yields a decent sheet of paper,
and everyone seemed delighted with the results. (The foot
pressing "paper dance" was even more fun than usual because across the
way was a demonstration of belly dancing, and the paper pullers copied
them, laughing and hip bumping away. Loved it!) The crowd came
in surges, but that was okay. We managed it well. There was only one vat, but there
were two pulling stations.
Callie (Janet/Charlie's daughter) manned one, and I the other, and
even with only one iron, it worked out beautifully. Good
day all way 'round.
5-24-07 Pulled paper right and
left and didn't bother to take pictures. Sorry. :) I will
at some point. These sheets were tissue thin abaca, hosta leaf
stem and bleach wild garlic with bluegrass inclusions. Lovely
stuff! I'm trying to build a stock of various papers so I won't
have to stop, cook and pull every time I come up with a project.
**Worked on a piece for the Community Art Show that's due on the 29th,
but I'm not at all happy with it. May pass on exhibiting this
time 'round unless I come up with something else.
5-25-07 I
love homemade bread with a passion, so much so that I've been known to
consume three hefty slices as soon as it comes out of the oven.
If I have a favorite bread, it's sourdough made from a wild yeast I
caught seven or eight years ago. The bread is sour with a
delightful flavor, and I really couldn't see how it could be improved on.
Still, I'm not one to close my mind to other possibilities. One
of those was San Francisco sourdough. Back last February I
ordered starter from Linda's
Bread, Wood
Design & More. (I can highly recommend this site for prompt
delivery and understandable instructions. A rank beginner could
follow the ones that came with the starter and be successful.)
Unfortunately, just about the time that my starter arrived, so did a
junk load of stuff that had to be done, and it wasn't until three
days ago that I found time to play with the starter. While I've
made sourdough bread for as long as I can remember, I've never
reconstituted dried starter, so I followed directions (almost) to
the tee. According to the instructions, it takes three days to
have a fully active starter, and I followed those, but along the way, about
the third morning, I had to make a loaf with the excess starter
instead of flushing it down the drain.
It was so active, I couldn't toss it. Gads! This is good bread!!! All it
took was
this, this, this and a few
other things like salt, oil and a few hours, and I had
a gorgeous loaf. (If
one end looks slightly shortened, it is. Priorities! I had
to taste before taking pictures.) But even better than beautiful
was the texture of this bread. It's
incredible. The flavor is excellent, as well, though it isn't as
sour as my own starter. (If I had gone by the directions that
were supplied for creating the loaf, I have a feeling the sourness
would have been more evident, but it still has an excellent flavor even
using the method I did. You can be sure I will try Linda's
loaf-making recipe/method at some point.) Now...back to my
ulterior motive for including the picture of the ingredients.
That doughbowl is one very special thing in my house. It's
yellow poplar and was
made for me by
Larry Oestreich
(that's pronounced "A-strike"), an excellent treenware maker who knows
his wood and respects its properties. I had to wait a full year
for that bowl, not because he was backlogged in orders, but because it
took that long to carve and season the bowl so there would be no fear
of it cracking. If it's cared for (and I can assure you it will
be as long as I'm around), that bowl will last my
lifetime and another lifetime, as well. Thank you, Larry, for
one very special treasure. And thank you, Linda, for a new treasure
in the San Francisco starter. Excellent combination, I must
say...a handmade doughbowl for homemade bread. |
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