A New Leaf

Last week my friend Patricia and I went for an evening walk in the Union Bay Natural Area, which is an area along the shore of Lake Washington a bit north of Husky Stadium behind the UW playing fields.  It's a wonderful place to walk without many other people around.  The area is a former landfill that has been/is being restored to a more natural state with rustling grassland, big trees, wetlands, and is full of wildlife, especially waterfowl: ducks, geese, eagles, osprey, and herons.  We saw a blue heron catch and swallow a fish, which bulged in its throat as it went down.  We also saw a beaver swimming in the lake, many rabbits,  and a large gathering of crows having a party.

We took a short jog off the main trail to get closer to the water's edge and this is what we saw:

 

Photos by Patricia Spencer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Two leaves were floating on the green surface of the shallows and they appeared to have writing on them....  I found a stick and was able to use it to pull these found poems out of the water.  They both had the same love poem written on them in tiny black printing.

"Your body undulates in generous curves"

In the language of books, a leaf "refers to the smallest, standard physical unit of paper in a printed piece; in the case of books and pamphlets, usually with a printed page on each side of a leaf; a broadside is printed on a single side of a single leaf."  (ABAA Glossary of book terms.)

 

Heart-shaped miniature broadsides.

Plants and Their Children

This lovely book from 1896 is a child's reading book about plants.

According to the author, "A child's reading book , it seems to me, should secure for the child three things,--practice in the art of reading, amusement, and instruction."

Mushrooms and Toadstools

Happy Thanksgiving!  We are spending the holiday in the San Juan Islands where we're experiencing an exciting windstorm.  Looking out the window from our cozy cabin, the water is choppy on the bay, a raven is struggly to fly against the gusts, and madrona berries are scattered festively over the front porch.  It is not raining.... yet.

We are planning an afternoon hike in the autumn woods, where we know from previous Thanksgiving vacations we will see a variety of fungi.  At Pistil Books, nature guidebooks are one of our specialties and we have a good collection of mushroom books (in part thanks to staff member Tim, who pared down his personal collection not long ago).

Perhaps we'll see a certain caterpillar with a hookah on our excursion.

To help you celebrate, here's a link to some great holiday sales deals from the Etsy Vintage Team.