Pressed Flowers & Dried Herbs

My grandmother has quite a lot of books on pressing & drying flowers & herbs for wreaths and bouquets and pot-pourries. And while it's rather predictable for a grandmother to be interested in such things, just for being lovely and old fashioned, I love them, too, for reasons same but different.






In pressing flowers I've learned about all of the little wildflowers that blossom over the spring & summer in the backyard. I've noticed all of the particularities of the flowers in the garden. And I've made loveliness, for free! I love sending pressed flowers to my friends, like little bits of summer in an envelope, and I feel a sort of thrill in doing something that girls and ladies in petticoats and dresses have done for ages.

 It's the same with drying herbs; just this week I made a little drying rack out of branches & am drying some English lavender from a wooden boat-shaped planter in the backyard. I like to imagine Elizabethan ladies, with ribbons braided into their hair, drying herbs purposefully and hanging them everywhere, with the kitchen door open to the garden. And it is so essentially summery. I love knowing that I'm doing something exclusive to the season, that I cannot do at any other time of year. What do you think? Have you ever tried any of this?
 click on photos for sources.

xo

Katherine
The Drifter and the Gypsy guest blogger for the week