Monday, May 21, 2007

Regeneration

This weekend we had a brief trip to the country so we could go on an informative walk led by a knowledgable local, looking at the use and abuse of water in our local area. Goldmining from the 1850s to the 1930s had made great changes to the landscape, not all positive, but what we saw on the walk was nature's regeneration of the land since mining stopped.

That was very interesting and worthwhile, but the highlight of the weekend was seeing our dam with quite a considerable amount of water in it, plus the usually dry creek behind our property not only had water in it but was flowing! Unfortunately I forgot my camera, but I'm sure you can picture it. And all the green around the place was a sight for sore eyes. We could hardly stop looking at it. Regeneration of the dam and land.

I wanted to get back to Melbourne by 3 on Sunday for a talk at the State Library. It was the last in a series on artists books, and this one had 3 artists talk about how they alter books and why. Most intriguing! For those of you who don't know what an altered book is, for an example picture a book with an interesting shape carved out of the cover and through at least half the pages. Beautiful! More info here. Btw, these books would have been thrown out and pulped anyway, and even the librarian in me would not be offended at this. As one artist said, it is like giving a book a new life. Regeneration of the book.

I felt regenerated from that weekend.

12 comments:

Susie said...

I had never heard of regenerated books. Glad you had a good getaway!
xo

Peter said...

Hi Val, lets NOT talk about football, it's amazing to watch nature transform things after rain isn't it, we have had about half an inch overnight and still raining gently so in a weeks time out with the mower again!!!

Pear tree cottage! said...

Val that is interesting I too have never heard of alter books art before how great! I can see why you would love it with your art and your librarian backgrown.

I was thinking about you and spoke to a friend about you too about two hours ago were your ears burning???

I looked over were I believe your property is and the hugest! blackest! thunder clouds were doing their best to drop as much rain as they could in as shorter time as possible right about there. Your dam is going to love that lot for sure.

have a great evening Val
Lee-ann

Val said...

Hallo Val, thanks for the "currently reading" tip of The Pure Land, I will have a look and see if I can find a copy.

Merle said...

Hi Val ~~ I am glad you had an enjoyable weekend - with the exception of the football !!!
Thank you for the tip of those page magnifiers. I had one years ago but it wasn't a good one. Will look up a better one. Keep well and Maybe next week ? Take care, Love, Merle.

Jeanette said...

Hi Val I have never heard of Altered books, very interesting.
I can picture the dams and streams with water flowing in them. I just have to go 5 mins from home to see water in dams on farms and the fields all starting to turn green. Rain beautiful Rain.

Jellyhead said...

How wonderful that you've had some rain on your property!

I haven't heard of altered books either, but they sound intriguing.

Glad you enjoyed your regenerative weekend!

Carole Burant said...

Regeneration is certainly a wonderful thing! I live in a mining town and for years our landscape was very stark and all you'd see were black rocks...now you would never recognize the area due to regeneration and land reclamation:-) xox

Tammy said...

I just love the greenness of nature! Glad you got some of that...
Enjoy your books!
:)

Cris said...

I had never heard of altered books before, glad you have been showing us this. What a nice weekend you had!

Unknown said...

Val, thrilled about the rain at your country estate ;-). I had meant to go to that event at the State Library but didn't get there. My brain was not imprinted with the fact that it was about altered books or I would have made a special effort to go. Would you like to drop by The Trad Pad for a morning tea and tell me all about it? Please take this as an official invite. You can email me off the sidebar of one of my blogs and we could tee things up. Think you mustn't live too far from me here in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne. I have been into a number of websites on altered books in the last few months - but have never seen one in real life.

Kerri said...

I'm so glad to hear your dam and creek have water in them. How wonderful!
You forgot your camera?????
OK, I can picture the green..and the wet water...lovely!
I'm glad you told us about altered books. I was wondering about them.