The Collection

It began beside the Himalayan honeysuckle.

One afternoon in the garden, summer had begun to change almost without announcement. The berries were darkening, the leaves were beginning to turn, and I sat for a while with my sketchbook and drew what was in front of me.

I wasn't drawing a Story Card. I was simply trying to notice.

The drawing came back with me to the Lantern Room and, for a while, that was all it was: a small record of an afternoon in the garden. But slowly another idea began to gather around it.

We had been thinking about autumn, about those almost imperceptible changes that tell us one season is beginning to give way to another. The drawing seemed to belong there.

And so The Turning began.

The little sketch became the starting point for our first Story Card. The berries found their colour, the leaves softened into green, and on the reverse another pencil drawing was allowed to remain just as it was.

We called it The First Gathering, because that is what it became: the first gathering together of a place, a drawing, a season and a story.

And perhaps the words on the back say it best:

Take your time.
There is always more to notice.