Pressing flowers: know-how and patience are all you need to preserve summer's bounty

摘要

I used to dread the arrival of cold weather, knowing that a frost would put an end to the time I spent outdoors coddling my flowers. But I've gotten over that. Now, instead of mourning the climatic change, I sit by the applewood fire, sip hot cocoa,and devote the time I used to spend tending my garden to thinking of imaginative ways to use all of the flowers I've pressed. Drying flowers in a press is a simple operation. In fact, when I decided that I wanted to press my flowers, I didn't even own aflower press. A frost was coming and I had to move quickly, so I hastily picked a basketful of blossoms, arranged them on sheets of paper, and stuck them into a heavy textbook that I weighted with a cinder block. Weeks later, my purple and yellow pansieswere still colorful, just as exquisite as they had been growing in the garden.