I have no real excuse for not getting these done...my brothers' sudden illness continues to cause us introspective anxiety that seems to have stopped any creative motivation I may have had dead in it's tracks, along with a bad dose of 'flu which has gradually laid us all three very low over the past few weeks...
Enough of that, on with the catch-up...
My last linked entry was Mexico, so my first for this post is Norway, which should have been linked on Monday 23rd. July. For this country I chose the Sneezewort as my flower and an old Norwegian Text for the mat..
I had taken some photographs of Colletia paradoxa, the cruciate or anchor tree in our Royal Botanic Gardens here in Hobart earlier in the year. It is listed as a tree of significance, and the only one I have ever seen.
The inchie is way too tiny to be able see them, but my photographs actually did have flowers on the spiky branches, so I used that image for my plant for Brazil, and an old stamp for the mat layer.
I thought the plant might be related to a viburnum, as the growth and emerging foliage resembled those plants slightly, or even Forsythia, as I had been photographing the lovely emerging blooms of several of these plants in the gardens of the park. However, as I didn't have a clue and could find no reference for it in my books, I posted this image on Instagram, asking if anyone knew what it was.
Fortunately I received a very prompt reply from a wonderful local gardener, (her images taken in her extensive garden are a visual delight), who told me it is Edgworthia chrysanthia, a plant from China, the bark of which has long been used in paper production in the region, even bank notes owing to it's durability and fineness.
So I decided to look no further for a representative. For this mat I used a page from a Chinese text bought as a library discard in Sydney.
I chose this one for the unusual shape, clearly visible in the larger image below, like a figure in a large sun bonnet...the mat for this week is an image of text from a tomb in an old Portuguese church.
Bye for now,
Di