Secret Notes of Encouragement

Why God invented shovels note

One day last week the phone rang connecting me to unexpected blessing. The voice on the other end of the call was a dear friend that I had been secretly encouraging for several months.

She said, "Do you have a tea bag? I've got a thermos of hot water.  Be ready at 2:00. I'll pick you up".

We sipped tea from vintage china cups, at a sunny lakeside park, on a perfect Autumn day. A bouquet of pink blooms and verbena graced the rough wooden picnic table.  Marcy brought our table setting in a wicker bicycle basket. We laughed, shared our hearts, and put together the mystery of the "secret notes". 

Marcy began receiving secret notes last June. I had been stealthily delivering messages of encouragement to my friend at her store, Garden Spot.  Arty notes with fun garden quotes. Some messages were for the intent of inspiring and strengthening her heart. Little pieces of cheer-ups. Positive quotes to help her heart heal and have hope.

Each note was made by layering ephemera on to a base of ledger paper. I then tore eye-catching pictures from garden magazines. These images are placed to bring a visual point of interest. I continued to play with small pieces of color and curiosities until I found just the right balance. The quirkier the better. Then I hand lettered an interesting garden quote. At the bottom I always added xoxo (not wanting to reveal my true identity). 

Always bring your sunshine (Marcy's Garden Spot is in Sunnyland)

Little did I know how my own heart would encounter devastation at the beginning of August. I felt vulnerable and exposed. My response was to pull my blankie over my head and withdraw. My resolve to keep delivering Marcy's secret notes kept me going. I pushed myself to create an arty paper, drive down to the Garden Spot, cheerfully threatened the staff to sworn secrecy, and then slink back into despondency as I drove home. 

I love this quote, “When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.”

― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Road to Daybreak: A Spiritual Journey

My dear friend did not know that our family had encountered a major life transition. I never expected anything in return for all those special deliveries to Marcy. God knew my heart. Marcy's beautiful act of kindness was exactly what my own healing heart really, really needed. 

Now, go encourage a desperate heart!

Romaine Man and Fresh Garden Lettuce

Lettuce is not one of my favorite foods. If a piece of lettuce happens to cling to my fork while munching on all of the salad fixins' (peas, chopped egg, mushrooms, etc) it is eaten. Eating store bought lettuce tastes bitter to me. That is why Romaine Man puts me in such a quandary.

Who is Romaine Man? He is one of those marvelous Bellingham mysteries. Romaine Man is seen running miles around our community during the middle of the day. "Oh look, there he is". "Oh my gosh, now he is running by the bay"... and then an hour later while driving up our hill, "Is he still running?". Sometimes Romaine Man stops running. When he sits still he can be seen eating whole heads of Romaine lettuce at a local market. He starts at the top of the lettuce bunch and eats down the stalks. No dressing, and certainly no salad fixins'.

I don't grow romaine lettuce due to Romaine Man trauma. Instead, I grow beautiful Spring salad greens. These green lovelies are at their peak in my garden. Red-tip lettuce, cos, oakleaf, arugula, baby spinach and endive. The following recipe includes Springtime salad fixins' in combination with fresh greens from the garden.

Strawberry and Spring Greens Salad 

For the dressing:
1/3 cup apple cider vinegar
¾ cup sugar
2 tbsp. minced shallot
¼ tsp. dry mustard
1 tsp. salt
6 tbsp. light mayonnaise
3 tbsp. freshly squeezed orange juice
6 tbsp. vegetable oil
1½ tsp. poppy seeds
For the salad:
Romaine lettuce, washed and dried
Strawberries, hulled and sliced
Blueberries
Mandarin orange segments
Fresh pineapple, cubed
Directions:
In the bowl of a food processor, combine the vinegar, sugar, shallot, dry mustard, salt, mayonnaise and orange juice.  Process to blend well.  With the feed tube open and the processor on, add the vegetable oil in a steady stream and continue processing until incorporated.  Add the poppy seeds and pulse briefly just until blended.  Transfer to an airtight container and refrigerate until ready to use.
To make the salad, chop the lettuce into bite-size pieces.  Plate individual servings of the lettuce in salad plates.  Top each serving with strawberries, blueberries, mandarin oranges and pineapple cubes as desired.  Drizzle lightly with the poppy seed dressing and serve immediately.

Recipe courtesy of Annie's Eats.

Now, go eat a head of romaine.

Transparent Layers

What tickles your eye? For me, it is light sparkling on water. How could layers a light shine within or through paper?

I think of a technique by Susan Lenart Kazmer.  Papers can be treated with her product Ice Resin for a transparent effect. A thin coating is made by exactly mixing both solutions together. As the resin cures it absorbs into the paper fibers.

And here's the good news: Glitter can be added to the resin as it dries for adding bling. 

I found all kinds of interesting effects in my resin experiments. In the examples from this photo five distinct papers were given the Ice Resin treatment. Some papers are more transparent than others. I found that aged ephemera has the most exciting results. One of the papers in my example is from an old ledger. Hand writing from the original peeks through dimensionally from both sides. This is a really neat effect. Really neat, really cool.  I glammed up it further by salting a bit of old German glitter while the resin was still wet.

On the largest paper I wrote over the velum like page with an Elegant Writer calligraphy pen. By angeling the point from wide to narrow my handwriting took on a vintage look. The quote is from a woman's diary who visited the Museum of Garden History in England. "...her garden journals, contain her color sketches illustrating where the color should go in a color layout of her garden..I poured over them", wrote  Laurie Kellar. Her sketches remind me of the nature journal I keep. 

After all this experimenting, I have decided to add the transparent seed packets and garden diary quotes to my in process wildflower altered book. Who knows, maybe someday my nature journals will inspire others in a garden museum.

Now go spread some resin over some neat old page!