Leaf-Hunter

> I think I've been in love with leaves forever—I can't remember when I didn't love them. I've made my husband stop on various drives so I could stop and pick a leaf, I've pressed countless leaves in the pages of books for years, and most recently, I brought home more leaves than souvenirs on the trip we just returned from. In fact, one of my best friends from college calls me "Leaf" (I can't remember how that happened, but it would sound wrong now if I heard her call me anything else).

> I always tell myself (and my husband) that someday I will take these beautiful little pieces of nature and create something really amazing with them. Unfortunately, I've paralyzed myself with the thought that once I make something, if the end product isn't more beautiful than the leaf itself, I will have ruined it. 

> As I mentioned, we just got back from a wonderful, long trip to DC and the surrounding areas. We spent a day in Gettysburg (more to come on the best parts of our trip!), and the path to take us to our parked car was beautiful and wooded, and I found several leaves I NEEDED to have. My husband is a good sport, so he actually waited every time I squealed (okay, I didn't really squeal) and bent to pick each one.

> My greatest disappointment is that I didn't have anything to keep them flat that entire day in the car, then at the hotel, I placed them between the pages of the only thing I had: brochures from places we'd visited. I put them under the corner of my suitcase, but it wasn't as heavy as it needed to be. I did the best I could with what I had, and while they arrived home surprisingly well, they are not as perfect as they could have been.

> Luckily, nature itself is beautifully imperfect, so they are all still imperfectly beautiful to me.

(The gingko leaves—the little fan-shaped ones—are from a tree in front of the Capitol Building. The others all came from various paths in Gettysburg).