"Lily-Palooza"- Bloomers Revisited

     
      What glorious days I'm living in,..you should see my yard! Half of our nearly ninety varieties are in full fantastic bloom! It's an adventure every day. Watching as the colors paint themselves across our acre and a half of east coast heaven is a gift with every new dawning day. 

      
      Early in the day I am photographing who's new for use in a catalog for next years market. In the evenings, I "deadhead" the plants and given that they're daylilies there are a bunch of them every night.  Prior to this busy week I would put the spent blooms in the compost pile. Well, not any more! Turns our daylilies make a great renewable resource for handmade paper. We're growing absolute bucketfuls out there here's to a new way to reap the benefits, A new day has come!  

      In my last post I mentioned that I would try to make handmade paper from the spent blooms. It's been an interesting week as it turns out. The lilies have a viscous sturdy make up, so the resulting paper is durable and could be made with 100% lily pulp. The drawback was that with out paper content there is a degree of shrinkage as it dries, so a minimum of recycled paper seems necessary to ensure it keeps a predictable size and shape. Check out the samples below. They were all made with the same deckle and mould but larger paper/lily sheets have maintained their 5"x7"  size while the others with more pure lily pulp decreased in size by a full 3/4 of an inch.

Daylight was fading when I took this photo,
colors are truer in the photo below

     
                 Predicting color has its many considerations as well. To some degree, the lilies color the paper, but it must be said that the freshness of the flowers is proportionate to the strength of color. When they start to wilt the color isn't as rich, and since the pulp is perishable vegetable matter,  if they sit to long after you pick them the flesh goes brown like a bitten apple. The richest reds however have really potent dye and some of the richer yellows hold up well. The more pastel lilies loose their color almost completely. However. you can supplement color with the paper you add.

Lilies and their corresponding papers.

     Their versatility knows no bounds because on top of everything else they are edible. In a salad they are beyond gorgeous. Of course by supper time they look like last weeks produce so best for lunch. They can be used to make jelly. flavor herbal vinegars, and there's a heritage recipe for daylily fritters on line.  Check out "The Delightful Delicious Daylily: Recipes and More"  by Peter Gail. Seriously,who'd have thunk it?

Art, in the Name of Love.

  

Saul the Seagull, created for the National Anglican Synod,
held in Halifax in 2010.

      Through the 40 years we've been together, my husband has been a teacher, a principal, an educational administrator, is yet a professor and now as well, an Anglican priest. Between of all of these professions he has often been a student as well. With two Bachelor degrees, three Masters degrees, an Educational Doctorate and the better part of his current Masters in Divinity he's the most "certified" soul on the planet.
     
     In his many roles, my husband has always prepared a wicked lesson plan, presentation, speech or sermon. He is an amazing speaker and amongst his students, co-workers, fellow students and parishioners he has actual fans. They all love him.

Handmade paper collage to illustrate
Psalm 137- "..by the rivers of Babylon"

      From time to time and usually at the last gosh darn minute, he asks for " just a little sketch" to better illustrate his topic of the moment. Poor fella can't draw a stick man without guidance  ( I guess he's been to darn busy to fit drawing lessons into his portfolio. Lol..) but he believes that I can perform miracles. I'm always stunned when he and others comment on my work with this awe and appreciation. I forget that this ability, that is innate and "usual" to me and many others, isn't always so in everyone. Then, I count my blessings and tackle the next project.

My very old Sunday school sheep-
Papier mache using egg cartons.

      Needless to say, there have been some varied requests. I've made visual aids for presentations, illustrations  and "Show-and-Tell" pieces for sermons, designs for the covers of church bulletins, murals in churches and schools, props and sets for plays, window paintings. Once I did portraits in pencil for a whole grade five class and the students had a bake sale to pay my "commission".

Palm Sunday donkey using strip paper mache.      

     
      On another occasion, he invited me to be a hands-on assistant to Renee Forestall, an artist and educator who is also the daughter of acclaimed east coast Canadian painter, Tom Forrestall, whose art has been classified as Magic Realism. Renee was educating classroom teachers who suddenly found themselves having to provide art instruction when art programs and their teachers were slashed out of existence due to cutbacks. She is the inspiration of  all of my paper and paper mache passion, adding leaps and bounds to my repertoire of media and creative play.

Collage of odd bits to represent
"Communion with Mankind"

      Over the years, it feels like I've must've made a thousand odd things. Now, hindsight is bittersweet and 20/20 let me tell you. I should've taken time to photograph every one of those myriad "masterpieces. What fun we could've had! I'd have had fodder for blogs for the next five decades. Luckily, there are still a few pieces kicking around for me to share them in todays blog.

A dove in pen and ink for a church bulletin.

       
      Some of my favorite pieces were pen and ink sketches created for church bulletins. With so many techniques to tempt me, I rarely just enjoy the simplicity of drawing. Every now and then when I do pick up a pencil or pen and ink, what a pleasure it is.
      

Another sunday bulletin cover

        Now that I'm fully equipped and trying something new everyday, It will be a privilege to record every future. project and share them here as well. It's been exciting to refresh my memory and have a venue to share. Happy days everyone!!

"Isaac's Bloomers."

      Our Number Three Son has left me holding a bunch of wild bloomers. Bloomers of all shapes and sizes, bloomers that for the next month or so will delight and thrill and tickle my fancy, bloomers full of slugs to squish?.. and weeds to wrench by their wretched, evil, conniving roots?

     
       No, we're not talking boxer-cut Hanes or bedeviling banana hammocks by Calvin Klein. We're talking daylilies. Eighty-four different registered cultivars. The beginning of the bloom season is already tempting me out the door at 6 am, coffee in hand and jammies on half sideways. I can't wait to roam amongst the dewy green foliage to search the beds and see who is blooming each day.

"Kwanso"

      Isaac worked as a gardener for three summers, trying to pocket a different "green" to help with tuition costs. He fell in love with these beauties and every couple of days he'd bring a few more home. Soon he had commandeered every ounce of arable garden space.


     My vegetable garden  all but disappeared at the end of that summer. A grower that he'd become acquainted with was downsizing his garden and whole clumps arrived by the truck full. I have to admit it was fun, learning something new from one of the  "youngsters". The process of dividing the clumps and "lining them out" for sale the following season was something I'd never done.

"Lavender Stardust"

     
With their arrival began lots of reading. Discovering that these daylilies weren't just the orange ones in every grandma's garden but over 60,000 varieties in shades and shapes and sizes I'd never imagined. Even greater was the knowledge that they are tough, impossible to kill and that they multiply like bunnies and bring your yard alive with such showy dazzling color. Bonus,..Bonus, bonus bonus!

"Scatterbrain"

      They come with some off-the-wall monikers too! Imagine if you will, Scatterbrain, Lies and Lipstick, Body Rub, Big Kiss, Druids Chant and Zola's Pink Nightgown!

"Lies and Lipstick"

      Isaac and I have even hybridized a few of our own as well. A refresher course for me in simple genetics ( AND honing my communication skills when the neighbours wonder why I'm flitting  from lily to lily with a pollen laden stamen from one flower in my two fingers to gently dab the pistil of another.)
      
      What an awesome way to get those old synapses firing.  We have three different crosses bearing at least 30 new variations are already blooming for the second time. Those babies will need crazy names of their own. I have 15 plants from another cross that may bloom this year AND a whack of new seedlings from last summer in a shady corner by the woodshed. It's like Christmas when they finally bloom for the first time. 
      As a new and exciting note, I thought I'd experiment with lily "pulp" as a resource for handmade paper. I went out with my coffee and gathered 6-8 spent blooms and twenty minutes later there are two sheets of lily paper drying on the window sill!  More about that in a later post.

"Baby Betsy"

      
      The boy is beyond busy now. Life has "happened" as it invariably does. I am weeding and coddling his babies for him at the moment.  As he grows into the hustle and bustle of his new life one thing is for certain, with all those fresh new faces greeting me each morning, my nest won't ever be empty.