August begins

wine red with tiny yellow tips coleus

fish net stockings they named this coleus

golden tips with a rusty red core color coleus

coleus magenta and green with saw tooth edges

The books and a set of cover boards, cut end papers and book cloth and a big glue brush.

Here are the completed pocket sized books in bright orange, midnight blue, milk chocolate brown, dark green, expresso brown, purple, golden satin, red/black Japanese wave print, rusty orange with a label to match the end pages printed by an Italian paper maker in Florence in this display.


I have completed 13 pocket sized books and one large journal book with several more in line for completion. I am enjoying seeing so many finished books in my stack. It is very satisfying to see my work begin to make a shelf full of journals for people to fill with ideas and sketches and what ever they like to do with a blank page. However the porch is getting warmer now and sweating is unavoidable. I just have been more careful and stick to working in the morning hours.

I also am really enjoying the coleus this year in our garden. We have been having just enough rain and the shade on the north side of our yard seems to be making these drought sensitive plants happy. We have always admired the big pots full of coleus down town at the Smithsonian's various gardens around the national mall. This year Keith picked up a couple and set them in a bare spot by the hostas and the mary rose. They took off in June with all that early summer rain and we added more middle of July which are doing pretty well. I guess we will plan to take some cuttings to keep over winter in vases of water because they are annuals for our climate. Other flowers not pictured here are the purple hyacinth bean vine which has finally started to flower, and the blue and white edged furry leafed Fuji morning glory. I am going to post more on my flickr garden pictures page.