New Work in Progress

With the prospect of the beginning of a new school year in just a few days hanging over my head, my goal has been to finish, or at least get a decent start on, my next altered book cover before school starts.  I'm feeling pretty good about where this piece is going (if not quite as good about where I'm going), in spite of some struggles with problems that I've hopefully remedied.  Here is the left side of the piece as it stands now:

The book page and end paper are from a vintage book of Longfellow's poetry and other writings, and the plant with roots as well as the petunia are image transfers of illustrations from a vintage botany textbook.  I don't know if you can see the little map scrap at the top right; it says, 'Old Davidsonville State Park'.  (You can probably read it if you click on the image.)  The odd thing about this is that it just showed up on my drafting table, and is not from the map I was using for this piece (which is now mostly torn off and underneath several layers of other stuff).  I just happened to look down, and there it was- and I took no notice of it really, until I realized there was a familiar name on it.  I guess it must have been in among some other things I pulled out of one of my scrap drawers.  I have no idea where this park is; if you do, I hope you'll let me know.

I apologize for the poor quality of the photo; I just quickly stuck this on the scanner, and it's not entirely flat, so some of it doesn't show up well.  I'll be posting better photos of further progress in the next day or two, and also explaining some of the meaning behind this piece.  

Just so you know, blogger is not always letting me leave comments on others' posts, and I'm having great difficulty uploading photos; once uploaded, it sometimes won't allow me to add them to my post.  What's up with that?  Maybe I shouldn't have made that comment about blogger and I not being on friendly terms... should I apologize?