More than Rosemary for Remembrance

Enlarge Image Image Gallery There’s no better way to bridge the age gap between family members than to share stories and photos of ancestors and days gone by. PHOTOS BY DAWNA EDWARDS

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Place photos and your favorite herbs between the pages of your scrapbook for botanical meaning and artful embellishments — reminders of days gone by, of fun and frolicking in the garden.

Someone once said, “God gave us memories so we might have roses in December.” Keep your memories and your roses from fading by making a combination scrapbook-herbarium. You’ll have mementos from the garden to accompany all of your photographed memories. Pressed flowers and leaves placed between the pages of your scrapbook will add to the memories evoked by photos from last week or decades ago.

Nature’s beauty and your own creativity furnish unlimited possibilities when put to the page, but a few suggestions appear on the following pages. Choose plants based upon the Victorian language of flowers, or simply for their color, shape and artful display. The scent of herbs also can trigger memories, because smell is the sense most closely linked to memory.

Herb-embellished memory books are just one way of incorporating your love for herbs with your photos. Focusing on the herbarium side of this idea (a collection of plant specimens) is a fun way to catalogue your garden’s prosperity or a particular plant, along with the people and memories that go along with it.

COLLECTING, PRESSING & DRYING BOTANICALS

Start a collection of herbs and flowers while nature is in full bloom or use previously dried botanicals from a specific event to decorate your pages. Collect and press plants throughout the seasons for the best variety to accompany your photos. Choose a mixture of leaf color, shape and scent.

Clip leaves and flowers in midmorning, after the dew has dried but before the sun begins wilting tender leaves and blossoms. Arrange leaves and flowers on a porous sheet of paper, such as blotter paper or newsprint, in a pattern similar to how you eventually plan to attach them to your scrapbook page. While you don’t have to decide everything about your design right away (believe me, it can change frequently along the way), try drying some leaves and flowers individually and some with stems in tact with varying curves so you have plenty to work with.

Once you have botanicals arranged on the paper, cover with a second sheet (double up both layers if the paper is thin) and place in a flower press or under some heavy books or boards in a dry place. Leave your drying botanicals untouched for about two weeks (you might want to check them once or twice to ensure they’re drying in the shape you desire, and that no mold is growing), and you’ll have a lovely supply of pressed herbs, perfect for embellishing the pages of your memory book.

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