Tossing Flowers

A while back--okay, a long while back--I bought a bunch of these acid-free archive boxes. For years, they held magazine and newspaper clippings. Each box held articles and pictures close on topics close to my heart: gardening, decorating, travel, etc.

But then, the Internet happened.

With Google, Google Images, and Pinterest, who needs clippings? I can type in "French flower garden" or "where to collect sea glass" and in an instant be flooded with info. Clippings are just clutter, now. So I opened up these boxes and started recycling:

Well, first I had fun looking at the images one last time. THEN I recycled all the paper. Because really, anything in the box could be called up on my laptop in a matter of seconds:

Still, it was fun going through the boxes once more. I found stuff I saved when I was planning out my rose garden, including the colors of roses I wanted to plant:

I faithfully kept these "What to do in Southern California" articles from Sunset magazine for years. I mean, YEARS!:

And in the clippings, I recognized certain trends. I love clever containers for forcing bulbs:

I'm a sucker for a cottage garden--especially if there's a birdhouse or two involved:

Sweet Peas are my love:

As are hydrangeas:

And lavender:

And fragrant, home-garden roses (not those scent-less creatures they sell in grocery stores):

I adore white flowers. And tulips. And white tulips just send me over the moon:

Did I mention I love hydrangeas?

My goodness. Look how long I've kept some of these articles! My mother grew gorgeous Bearded Iris in our back yard when I was a child. One whiff of an iris, and suddenly I'm a knock-kneed six-year-old again, thrusting my nose into these glorious, perfumed harbingers of spring:

Day lilies--but only pink and white and pale yellow day lilies--make me crazy-happy:

And I never met a chippy, Victorian-style, white-painted garden thingummy that I didn't immediately love:

Ooh, look! Packets of sweet peas--with seeds still inside!:

Oh, dear. They are 13 years old. *Sigh.*

Too bad. I love Sweet Peas to distraction. (Or did I say that already?)

And although I can't grow African Violets worth beans, they always make me smile, because my mother and her mother were both champion African Violet growers:

I would travel to the ends of the earth to see a flower this blue:

And this French-looking garden? Magnifique!

I have a tuteur, although mine is a much more rustic one, made of precisely cut twigs. My tuteur doesn't grow anything on it. It just looks so darn cute:

Oho. Now, this brochure is worth saving. California is going through a drought, and by all accounts it is going to get much worse before it gets better:

Yes, indeed. I'll be keeping this one, too:

But as for the rest of the paper and ephemera, it's outta here:

Won Ton is showing you the size of the bag that I filled with the clippings I don't need to save in physical form any more:

See ya on da Interwebs, pretty pictures! Knowing I can always call you up, it wasn't hard to let you go.

And now, I have a stack of beautiful, empty archival storage boxes waiting for my next project.