Tuesday, January 21, 2014

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.






5 comments:

  1. I’m doing the very same thing…thanks to your inspiration. Feels good. (beautiful pictures, BTW!)

    ReplyDelete
  2. …almost too beautiful to let go of ?!?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Nope! Easy to let go of, knowing there's Google Images and Pinterest, and a dozen other websites full of gorgeous imagery. I just don't need to keep the paper version, any more.

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