poetry and paper

i'm helping with 

a collaboration: SLU's arts collaborative, the 

 sustainability semester, TAUNY (traditional arts in upstate ny)

we're making a poetry garden which

"makes paper from local plants as a way to celebrate the environment, engage community and teach traditional hand papermaking practices".

 the sustainability semester folks have a nice big garden

and they planted  

some flax and some milkweed

 three of us showed up on the hottest saturday of the summer

only it was september

to process some 

fiber.

 flax

 iris and daylily leaves

 this little building i'd like to take home, 

it's a storage/drying shed

 sarah (the driving force behind this collaborative) and esthela

poets and slu faculty

showed up for the grunt work.

 we three attempted to prep enough plant fibers

for saturday's plant papermaking class at st lawrence

 we three

 got a lot of plants chopped, 

steamed, 

scraped and 

pulped

and the papers we make

will be substrate for poems

which will be planted

along with some bulbs and roots and rhizomes

for spring surprises

at the sustainability farm. (click for info)

~

oh, and that sustainability farmhouse

used to be the local cooperative extension office

where i worked 

(and grew a fiber/papermaking garden)

for five years or so in the 90's.

i'm so glad to be making paper here again.