“Expect nothing. Live frugally on surprise.” (-Alice Walker)

This morning, I did some sketching, and then, as I was browsing through an old art book, I couldn’t help smiling.

I’d forgotten that long ago, I had tucked flowers inside the pages of this book, and so it was sweet to open the pages and have brilliant colored pansies burst upon the pages I was reading.

Do you press flowers?

I used to take them, sit the dried flowers on pretty stationery pages, and then press clear contact paper over them, to make pretty cards. I haven’t done that in years. As you can see, I’m no artist about this. Some of them, by chance, are perfectly placed on the page and they come out looking elegant.

Others are a bit ruffled by the experience,…

or look a bit worse for wear…

…and some,…well, let’s face it, some just come out looking like Yosemite Sam.

Pressed leaves in the fall are gorgeous, too. In our guest room, one day, I opened up a book on Scottish history and found beautiful leaves all throughout it. For whatever reason, the flowers and leaves both keep their vibrant colors for quite some time. I suppose they don’t get at the air, all snug in their cozy homes there.

So, while I enjoyed finding these today, I popped them right back inside their pages, so that the next time someone picks up one of these books, they’ll have that same sense of surprise all over again.

“Surprise is the greatest gift which life can grant us.” (-Boris Pasternak)