Monthly Archives: September 2026

Autumn Fires

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For the third bulletin board, I went with this only tangentially related poem from Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Children’s Garden of Verses, which I think is delightful, although it is probably not the least bit relevant to children in Arizona in 2026: it’s far too hot for bonfires, summer isn’t pleasant and it isn’t really over, and we have plenty of flowers in the fall and even in the winter. Our seasons are less defined and less predictable than anything a Scottish poet in the 19th century could have imagined.

But it’s a catchy little piece.

To save time, I used markers instead of cutting the letters from paper. I tried to make the letters look kind of fiery and it seems to have succeeded. Not sure about the smoke. People seem astonished about me writing freehand but it’s so much easier than cutting. These were pretty good markers—they have to be to draw on black paper.

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Autumn Desert Flowers II: Tansy Aster

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The colors of butcher paper stocked by my school change occasionally, but this beautiful lavender has never come up before. I was so excited to see it, and I knew that I would have to make this tansy aster, a common wildflower in southern Arizona. So even though I didn’t start with a theme, a theme emerged. Sort of.

After finishing both flowers I thought it would be fun to give them both little interpretive signs like it was a botanical garden. I chose the name most commonly used here in Tucson, another common name, and the scientific name (this one is Machaeranthera tanacetifolia) and I used paint pens for the lettering to save time.

I’ll save back a few feet of lavender paper for the future. No doubt, when this roll is gone, it won’t come up again for a decade or so.

Autumn Desert Flowers I: Mexican Bird of Paradise

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Creating 3 bulletin boards that all matched was starting to feel kind of burdensome, and it occurred to me that the bulletin boards don’t all have to go together, so instead of starting with a grand theme, I decided to start with one idea. This is the Mexican Bird of Paradise (Latin name Caesalpinia pulcherrima) aka the Peacock Flower (aka a lot of other things). It’s a ubiquitous ornamental here in southern Arizona, but it seems to be native to the Caribbean, and is specifically associated with the Barbados, but also with Suriname. I couldn’t find a definitive place of origin, but I didn’t look very hard either.

Anyway, they’re very showy and stunning, very complex blossoms. The flowers begin to bloom from the bottom of the pyramid of buds and as each layer shrivels a new layer opens.

This image already seems to resonate with its audience. There are 2 Mexican Bird of Paradise bushes in the courtyard where the bulletin boards hang, and most of the kids figured it out. The actual flowers are less than an inch wide; these paper simulacra are probably 20 times larger than life.