Growing

Plants

You may have noticed an extra page on my website: Plants.

There are definite seasonal waves to creative processes, some are months or years long and I am learning to  rest upon them well, rather than freak out about all the things that I am not doing.  This year has been one of growing in all kinds of ways. It has been great to tap into a creative root. It is necessary for my wellbeing and nourishing,  and feels fantastic. This growing year has rested upon the previous ones of spinning, weaving, dyeing and intense makings of silk bowls and jewelry.  

This year I needed to look outward to the sky to the earth and let my hands lift seedlings and delicate root fibres of plant beings.  I am intensely interested in colours from plants and the best way to understand these is to grow them and spend time watching leaves break the seed shells and watch the growth unfold through all the stages of life, there is nothing better than this, each stage is teeming with beauty and gifts. I love all growing things but especially plants that have a human interaction, a way that they can be used in the life of a home. I started growing these a long time ago and I found the relationship I had with them had a different quality, I had a more prominent love and attention for them and the pathway for a feeling of communication was clearer.

So here we are today, with a host of plants to share with local folks. It was great to show some of them off at the ‘Summer Spin-In’ at Matara in July and send them away to new homes. We have a humble list at the moment and this will be added to in the year to come, starting with an Autumn sowing that I am looking forward to. We have dye plants and medicinal plants and am looking for the more unusual ones.

This is our contribution to closing the loops and bringing the supply possibilities closer to our local folks. We have Dyers Chamomile, Woad, Dyers Coreopsis, echinacea, mugwort, clary sage, sweet grass, angelica, yarrow, mullein…..