Revival of the Planting Notebook

Happy Spring everybody! Tsubaki here and back with something you guys might have remembered from a while ago but, this time it is back and better than ever! Behold the revived planting notebook! 

Now for those that don’t remember let me recap. Before my A5 Olive Roterfaden became only a swatch notebook system, it did have an A5 Life notebook that was only for planting progress. However, I did not keep up with it mostly for reasons I will go over later in this post. 

This year, I randomly decided to do small planting projects which included plants I take care of at work in the office. On top of that, I am still keeping a young lemon tree alive inside my apartment which sprouted in mid-2020. With all of this happening, I decided to bring the notebook back but with major improvements. 

First, let me break down what didn’t work the first time. Notebook size! I do most of my writing in A6 or A5 slim/ Traveler’s Notebook regular size. I rarely use a regular A5 size notebook since I find it difficult to take up the entire page with writing. For me personally, A5 notebooks are also difficult to carry and easily pull out of my bag when I decide to do some writing outside.

The notebook I have decided on for the planting notebook is Field Notes since they are a nice portable size. I have seen Field Notes many times before but I was not compelled to buy any until now. I ordered the “Signs of Spring” three-pack as I love the debossing designs of the Ghost Flower, Quaker Ladies, and Contra Costa Goldfields. I did not need a continuous subscription as I am not writing a lot but hope to use a notebook per year. I love that it is a dot-graph paper which is my favorite paper type as it isn’t so distracting when I write. In this notebook, I shall write down how the plants are doing and what seems to be working or not.

I originally wasn’t planning to get a cover for it until I went into a local shop called Goods for the Study, here in NYC and found a pocket heritage cover by Louise Carmen that I liked! It is in military color with a nice orange band and has pockets to of course hold leaves that I wish to draw in the notebook. 

I am trying to see if I will also have a local native plant preservation notebook with the planting notebook since the cover came with a notebook. It is just going to be a list of what plants are local in my area and how I can help to keep the population strong, especially with more frequent heavy storms taking out the native plants and natural habitat of the animals we have here.

As an ending note, I am only using a lead pencil for my planting notes. The Field Notes I have is very textured and did not say if it was fountain pen friendly so I am using my Caran d’Ache x Nespresso edition number 4 Fixpencil.

I do like Field Notes and their designs but I do wish they were fountain pen friendly or at least noted if the paper was fountain pen friendly. Besides that, the notebooks are very light and easily portable! If you need something to stick in your pocket definitely check them out.

Hope you all enjoyed this post! Until next time, stay hyped!

Louise Carmen Roadbook Heritage Review

Once again I have been on the search for more interesting analog systems. This time thanks to Instagram I stumbled upon Lousie Carmen. In this post, I will give you some background information and overall how I feel about it.

Louise Carmen is a boutique shop in Paris that makes beautiful and refillable leather notebooks. Louise Carmen was created in 2016 by Fabien and Nathalie Valmary. I personally love the passion they have to bring leather notebooks to France. We see leather notebooks like the Traveler's Notebook in Japan and even Roterfaden from Germany so I hope the overall joy of leather notebooks can be available to as many people as possible. Thankfully they have this lovely website which I was able to order from!

They have much different leather notebook sizes with their own features and added accessories you can pick as you browse their online store. Thankfully the website has French and English options so if you are like me you can also navigate and select the designs you prefer.

I picked the Roadbook Heritage because I like the trifold opening and that I can fit three notebooks. I got it in the color vert London with a brown cord, three white 120g notebooks, a noel theme travel pouch, and engraving in a neutral color. The shipping was very fast with UPS and cost 40.11 euros. In total everything was 187.11 euros.

It was packaged very well and was wrapped like a gift in black tissue paper with a golden sticker with Louise Carmen on it. When I took the paper off the travel pouch with notebook system inside greeted me. The pouch is very lovely and likes how the brand is sewed on. The notebook itself is beautiful as the vert London is a nice dark green and love how smooth it feels. The engraving looks amazing on the cover bottom right corner and I am very happy with it. After having it for a little while I also appreciate the bit of metal hardware which prevent the cords from rubbing against the leather.

Overall I love this system and hope to use it for a personal comic project. The notebook can also fit Traveler's Notebook inserts so for now my setup is two Traveler Company watercolor regular inserts and one Louise Carman dot notebook. I recommend this to people who want a light multiple notebook system but need wider notebooks. These have plenty of space to draw and write plus the experience of shopping from them is wonderful.

Hope you all enjoyed this, until next time, stay hyped!