First harvest
On Monday of this week, I celebrated my first harvest of flowers from my home pigment garden. I cut moonshine yarrow, purple pincushion (Scabiosa), coreopsis (Tickseed, two varieties), and buckwheat flowers. Lots of yellows and a little purple, as that’s what’s abundant in my early summer garden.
All the plants were buzzing with insects: bees of several varieties, snake flies, butterflies, moths, and even a goldenrod crab spider (see photo), an improbably yellow globular beast who shoots strands of silks between stalks as it ambushes prey. A real life Spiderwoman!
It surprised me how difficult it was to cut the flowers. I felt like I was stealing nectar I had promised to the pollinators and cutting foliage I had pledged to the beneficial insects. A few of the larger bees buzzed my ears as I cut, a gesture I took as a warning: we’ll share, but don’t get too greedy.
And so, on my first harvest, I reconsidered my fantasies of armloads of cut flowers. Perhaps the better model is regular, small harvests during which I deadhead spent blossoms and collect a handful or two of fresh blooms, always leaving several more handfuls for others. These small bouquets I will dry, and once I have several bunches I will make ink. If deadheaded, most of these plants will keep at it all summer. We—the flowers, the insects, and I—can form a long-term partnership!
This gardening season has been all about forming such a partnership. I left lots of brown stalks and dead plant matter over the winter, and sat on my hands in April and May as spring fever hit and I wanted to clean up the garden. Instead I left the residue of last year for the beneficial insects that, I hoped, were still overwintering there, using those brown stalks and piles of leaves as protection against still cold nights. Then one day I noticed my yarrow, already growing gangbusters, were teeming with lady bug larvae. The previous summer some nearby plants suffered from devastating aphid infestations. Not this year! Thank you lady bugs.
But the partnership has also posed challenges. We have a gigantic box elder bug population, and the mulch in the backyard harbors infinite earwigs and slugs. These have cleared many seedlings of all of their leaves in just one night. I scattered packets of wildflower and dye plant seeds in some raised beds, and I’m struggling to protect the cotyledons from nighttime marauders. Let’s hope that a later blog post includes photos of a lush dye garden overflowing with plants grown from seed. We’ll see…
Yarrow blossoms ready to be simmered and made into an ink.
As I type this I’m simmering a pot of yarrow dye in my garage. It smells amazing! My first dip test produced a pale canary yellow. Soon I’ll take it off the heat, strain and strain again, and begin the process of reduction. If all goes well, yarrow ink will be my first creation of the summer season.
In other news, this spring I made four small drawings from inks made from plant materials collected in my neighborhood: sycamore bark gathered in my backyard, and rose petals, grape hyacinths, and marigolds gathered from neighbors. (The marigolds and rose petals were collected last autumn and dried. The sycamore bark and grape hyacinths were collected fresh in early spring.) I’ve been experimenting with a dip pen and botanical inks, and that’s what I used on these drawings.
Botanical Squares installed at McKinley Arts Center in Reno, Nevada.
These drawings can be viewed now at the McKinley Arts Center here in Reno. I’m excited to again show work with my fellow members of the Downtown Modernists. The current show is titled “The New and the Now” and is on view through July 26. We’ll hold an artists reception the evening of Tuesday, July 9 from 5-7 PM. I hope to see you there!