How to use this Page

Poster for Vysoka Zed’ (The High Wall) c1964 Directed by Karel Kachyna

Stunning posters from the Czechoslovakian designer Zdenek Ziegler.

Poster for Krik (The Cry) c1963 Directed by Jaromil Jires

Poster for Jules and Jim c1967 Directed by Francois Truffaut

Share This

Grand Prize goes to MidcenturyMaude 2nd Prize goes to Abby S

©2009 Grain Edit

Grain Edit reader Dan Chamberlain sent in this rad safety match label from the 1970s.  He discovered it on a recent trip back to his hometown in Essex where he stumbled upon his Grandfather’s collection of matchboxes.

You can see some of the other labels from his grandfather’s collection here.

Share This

©2008 Grain Edit

The Jungle Race - c 1967- Published by  Bancroft & Co.

Super cool children’s book from Czech illustrators G. Seda and J. Pavlin. One of many pop up books the duo illustrated during the 1960s and 70s.

The short version of this story is: a lion, an elephant and and a giraffe try to put together a race and find out that their friends are totally lame. Their loser friends include trendy Zebra fashions snobs, snorkeling hippos and an antelope that likes to get tossed in the air by a gaggle of monkeys.

Share This

Solo Lipnik - UUZO Praha - Pronti Tetanu label - 1960s?

Super cool matchbox label from Czechoslovakia. Pretty intense colors. Nothing like taking a bike ride through a field of ketchup. Can anyone translate the text?

Share This

road map of Czechoslovakia from 1962

Obviously the design work of a mad genius who is addicted to lollipop trees.

(Via the really good Kris’s color stripe blog)

Share This

This weekend we had some rainy days but still had a little patch of time out in our yard. It was lovely doing a little bit of tidying up in the garden, trimming back some plants, mowing our little patch of grass and raking up the leaves. The big trees at the very back of our yard, behind the shed, lost their leaves very quickly. The picture above is a little lilac tree that I planted a few weeks ago. I thought it had died - it was much taller than this - and I cut it back and left it. But then I noticed these little leaves growing. That made me happy.

After living in apartments and then a condo for so many years it is so nice to have a yard again. We also started a little compost pile in the corner which is great because we just throw everything from the yard in there. And now and then some bits of food from the kitchen - eggshells, banana skins, vegetable bits. It really decomposes down very quickly and I just turn it over now and then with a bow rake. (I just figured out what it's called from google - basically just a short sturdy rake). Later on I may add a little bit of fencing around it or something but right now it seems be working - not very elegant but simple and effective. And maybe it's all the fresh air but there doesn't seem to be any bad smell at all. In fact when I turned it over it had a nice earthy smell - like forest undergrowth after a rain.In the back we have a great shed - it's really big and already has an "L" shaped work table in it. Someday we'd like to finish the walls and fix it up a bit. I imagine a summer studio but it's been pretty practical having a place to put the garden tools, our bicycles and pots and things.The best part is my potted plants now have a chance at a decent life with some real sunshine. This begonia has been flowering since we moved in at the end of July (thank you Jaimie!). I found the green ceramic planter at the Sunday market at St. Lawrence for $5. It's so nice, the base is shaped like big petals. I love ceramic planters.

Today is Blog Action Day, a single day in which bloggers all over the world post on the same topic. This year the topic is the environment. 

I can't write unless I am comfortable in my environment. Sure, to an extent that means I need a comfy chair and an ergonomic setup for typing. But to me it means more than that, it means that I have to be happy in my surroundings. Some of that is inside and some of it is outside. I'm an introvert so I get my energy from my time alone. My home is comfortable, cozy, filled with books in just about every room. It's a good environment for my writer self. 

I also love the outdoors and get energy from driving along the backroads in Santa Cruz amongst the redwoods and ferns. It is both soothing and energizing at the same time. In the last house we rented we wanted to try to replicate that same "back to nature" feeling in our yard. We didn't own the place so there were limits to what we could do. We decided to start small and practice for a time when we had a home of our own. There was a sideyard that used to be used for RV storage - translation: It was dead, not even any weeds growing there and packed down hard as cement. It looked like this:


My husband had majored in enviormental issues (as well as politics and economics) and suggested we look into California Native Plants. 

Native plants are, as you might expect, plants that grew in your area long before civilization arrived. They co-evolved with animals, fungi and microbes, to form a complex network of relationships and are the foundation of our native ecosystems, or natural communities. And here's the thing, a native plant garden is so much easier to take care of than a traditional garden. If you plant the right plants for your area they will improve the soil, send down deep roots that will be able to deal with your natural waterfall (or lack of in my case here in California) and they will encourage the reappearance of native wildlife from bugs to butterflies to birds and more.

There are some plants that are the sole food for native wildlife. In California, our state insect is the Dogface butterfly. Sadly many people will never see one because larvae of the Dogface buttefly feed almost solely on the California Native plant False indigo. This plant is on the endangered species list maintained by the California Native Plant Society.

So with just a little bit of research I was hooked on the idea of taking our barren sideyard and using it as an experimental California Native plant garden. We took a trip to Native Revival in Aptos and spent several weekends digging holes and planting plants. After 3 weeks we ended up with this, already an improvement over the bare, dead dirt.


We didn't put in a sprinkler system because the idea was to see how the garden would do if we left it to Mother Nature. We followed the nursery's suggestions to water the holes well when we planted, to water once a week for the first month, and to mulch heavily. Then we mostly left it alone. And one year later, with no extra water, no fertilizer, no supplements at all, we had this:






It's safe to say that I have been converted to the idea of using Native Plants as much as possible. The yard was always full of wildlife activity even though we lived in the middle of the city, three houses from the freeway. Neighbors with a bird bath told us they had never, in 45 years of living there, seen as many different birds in their yard as they had after we planted our native plants. We left that garden behind earlier this year when we moved but I'd like to think we gave a little back to the environment by improving that patch of bare dirt.

We bought a house this year and a few weeks ago we had everything ripped out of the backyard except for a single tree and the grass. The grass will be going too but not yet. We put up a new fence and are busy working with the Native Plant designer, (Pete at East Bay Wilds) planning our new yard which will be filled as many Native Plants as possible. 

Pete can't promise me a Dogfaced butterfly but he has promised to help me improve my environment which will, in turn, improve my writing.

 

The Poison Diaries
Author: Colin Stimpson, Duchess of Northumberland, Jane
Publisher: Harry N. Abrams, Inc.
ISBN-10: 0810993147
ISBN-13: 978-0810993143


The Poison Diaries is one of those books that you can’t help gazing at again and again. Story aside, the book is gorgeous. Rich, pastel like drawings that cover every inch of the page make it captivatingly sumptuous with all the style of an old-fashioned, Victorian herbal.

Each plant is lovingly drawn in great depth and detail and the book appears to be a kind of field guide to the plants in a garden as you first flip through it. Then you start to notice that the plants have almost human characteristics that they appear to be not only alive, but also malevolent. My first reaction was to stop flipping through it and start back at the beginning.

The story unfolds as darkly gothic as something from out of Lovecraft. The story is of an orphaned boy named Weed who works in his cruel master’s poison garden tending to the plants. He discovers that he can hear the plants talking and they him.

The plants are evil creatures who adore telling tales of the manner in which they kill. They goad Weed and try and encourage him to kill his master, glorifying murder and offering justification. He refuses to go along with them until one day he finds that his only friend and true love Marigold has experimented with one of the poisons and dies. With Marigold’s death, Weed unravels, sinking into a madness that the plants feast on and use to control him into doing what they want which is to kill.

I was completely caught up in the story even though I tend to shy away from very violent books and this is violent make no mistake about this. It is violent and graphically so. Still, the story is a good one, riveting though chilling. I have a feeling there will be more stories about Weed and his plants in the future or at least there should be given that the book left me wanting more.

I’m fascinated by the fact that the author was once a Disney animator. I could completely see this story animated although certainly not for children. It would make a very dark, very interesting film I think. The Poison Diaries comes highly recommended.

Book Description from the publisher:

This truly gothic tale—a “facsimile” of Weed’s journal found at Alnwick Castle, in England—is not only a story of the battle between good and evil, but an educational parable of the curative and lethal properties of plants.

Weed—an orphan boy who apprentices with an evil old apothecary—is both used and abused. His journal is part botanical workbook and part diary of his own relationship with poisonous plants.

Weed discovers that he is one of the few people whom the plants talk to, and they try to persuade him that, with their help, his master can easily be disposed of. Although he refuses at first, after Weed’s first love, Marigold, experiments with the poisons and dies, he is pushed over the edge and plots to kill his master with a taste of his own evil medicine.

Each chapter of the story begins with Weed’s botanical notes: a plant’s appearance and properties, where it is found, how it should be cared for, the most poisonous parts, and how poison is extracted and administered. Accompanied by Weed’s sketches of the plants in their natural form, his diary also reveals the “real” personalities of the plants.

About the Author
Jane, Duchess of Northumberland has long researched poison gardens. She is responsible for creating the Poison Garden at Alnwick Gardens in England, which opened in 2004 to worldwide acclaim. The Poison Garden is the culmination of her life’s goal to teach children and adults alike the curative and lethal properties of poisonous plants. Colin Stimpson worked as an animator at Steven Spielberg’s Amblimation studio in London and then at Disney Feature Animation in California.