It’s warming up and I’m out in the garden mostly weeding and attempting to tame the jungle out there. While I drew a dye garden design earlier in the year, part of the fun for me is allowing it to evolve, once I’m out there in the sun, yanking out an enormous crop of… Continue reading Awaken Your Space: How to Begin your Backyard Garden
The first dye mushroom I ever connected with was Omphalotus olivascens. I didn’t know what it was when I saw it, but it looked promising. I was wandering in a Marin County oak forest after a rain looking for potential dye mushrooms. After a while I began to see all kinds of little guys. They… Continue reading Mushroom Dreams
I love the surprises of the seasonal and annual natural dye colors. While natural dye color can be generally predictable, variations occur based on many factors. Like wine, natural dye color is influenced by growing conditions: soil; weather; location. This is what viticulturists call terroir. Terroir affects wine flavor on one’s palate and in the same way affects the color palette in a dye. And like wine, each variety of dye plant has a vintage that’s individual to the area and varies, beautifully, year to year.
The language we focus on informs us, it shapes who we become, it shapes our culture. Let’s become multilingual, and remember the language of plants, animals and seasons, and bring the fruits of these languages to our community.
What is the language of our land? I wonder about how language currently shapes our perceptions of the world. When language aligns with the land it came from, it is likely saying something very specific and necessary.
local dialect 