A Year in Review:From Seed Collecting to a Baby Sprout!
I don’t think I could talk about how year 2 in the garden started without wandering back to last fall, back to collecting seeds and watching the garden get hit with the first frost of winter. It was all extremely beautiful, in a quiet, elegant way, and it made this summer possible.
As I was collecting seeds last fall, my husband Colin and I were talking about starting a family. There was something so incredibly cozy about considering bringing a little human into the world while everything in the garden was pulling in and letting go, conserving energy for the seasons to come, hunkering down and nestling in for the winter. Collecting little life-pods left over from the flowers I’d grown and tended to all summer, seeds that held entire plants for a second season in the garden was a very special process for me, and felt so appropriate for where we were in our lives at that moment.
In February, I found out I was pregnant, and we rejoiced! I knew that being pregnant would affect my summer in the dye garden in one way or another but because I wasn’t exactly sure what shape that would take I decided to go ahead and plant the garden I had planned anyway, just in case I had the capacity to tend to it more than I was imagining. We’d also lost a pregnancy earlier in the winter and we very much felt the possibility of losing another so it seemed important to invest in things for the future that would bring me joy.
What did that end up looking like? I started Japanese Indigo, Cosmos, Coreopsis, and purple basil from seeds I’d collected from last year’s garden.
I started purple pincushion, marigolds, hopi red dye amaranth and more dyer’s chamomile from seeds I purchased mostly from Grand Prismatic Seed
The weld was going to be in its second summer as a biannual, and so were the hollyhocks, and that was a lot to look forward to. I knew that the hardy hibiscus, the dahlias, and the dyer’s chamomile from the previous year would be returning.
By the time May rolled around my starters were all beautiful and I put them in the ground, planting Hopi black dye sunflower seeds collected from the previous season directly into the soil, doubling the amount of indigo, planting more coreopsis than year 1, and more cosmos as well. Turns out I didn’t need to worry about the cosmos, they had self seeded all over the place!
We’ve been lucky this summer, we haven’t had a drought like we did last year. That means we haven’t needed to be as mindful about watering, but it does mean we’ve had a tremendous amount of weeds. I will say, I can’t quite keep up with them and the garden this year hasn’t had the order that it did last year. My OCD struggles with it a little bit but I also realize it’s ok! Any time I got in the garden this year felt like a miracle so I was happy just to be there.
The three things to come into bloom in the garden first were (in order of appearance) the weld, the dyer’s chamomile and the hollyhocks starting in the first half of May. I quickly got to work harvesting as much of them as I could and saving them.
Dyer’s Chamomile in it’s second season, mid-June 2022.
I tried out the weld and the hollyhock dyes for the first time with much excitement and yielded some very fun results:
Then the hardy cosmos, coreopsis, dahlias and marigolds started to bloom. The amaranth started to grow tall, the hardy hibiscus (though totally attacked by bugs this year) grew tall too and put forth their giant dinner-plate sized blooms. A deer got into the garden and ate the leaves and tops off almost all of the Hopi black dye sunflowers and I found myself with only 3 stalks, 1 of which I got to in time to harvest seeds!!
Giant Hardy Hibiscus Blooms!
Hopi Red Dye Amaranth in full bloom, Early August
It’s now November and the summer flew by! I made it out to the garden less than I was able to last year, but every time I went out, it brought me joy and peace. My little freezer is packed full and I’ve been trying to dye when I have a chance. It’s been much slower to dye things because I couldn’t lift the giant stock pots of water myself while pregnant, and outside of preparing for the baby, I moved my studio over the course of the summer, and worked on a huge art commission of a scale that I’d only dreamed of before. You never know when the different facets of your life that you’ve been cultivating will bear fruit, and though unexpected, it’s important to seize those opportunities!!
Purple Pincushion!
That being said, I’ve had to recalibrate my expectations around how much I’m dyeing this year and lean in to make every time I am able to, count. Every element of this santamente project is a learning experience right now and I’m fortunate to be doing it completely for pleasure and education, even if at some point I would like to be able to put some of the fabrics I dye back out into the world in some shape or form. It’s ok if that takes time, it’s ok to allow myself to become comfortable with and better at these skills before I rush to create “products.” If you’re reading this or following along, I SO appreciate your patience! You’re the best!
Pregnancy was really empowering for me, I feel really grateful. It pushed me to do and say things that I’d been sitting on for a long time. It made me more courageous. I’ve been trying out Shibori tying on onesies and doing dye experiments. Outside of what I yield from the garden I’ve also tried out new purchased dyes this year for the first time: Cochineal, Logwood. I’ve been using my indigo to extract pigment via the aqueous method and after my second attempt, it’s actually worked! (more on this in a blog post to come). I’m falling more in love all the time with natural dyes and dyeing and cultivating dye plants, the future in general holds so much beauty, I can’t wait to dive deeper and deeper into these practices, and to have a tiny one to teach it all to, one day <3.
In the meantime, our sweet little baby, Aster, has arrived!! She came 6 weeks early after some very unexpected severe preeclampsia, but she’s two months old now and the absolute light of our lives. Of course, Colin and I are growing and learning by leaps and bounds these days, and there have been plenty of challenges. But it’s truly incredible to make a little human with a person you love so much. As I sit with the tiny one these days I think a lot about how much bigger our lives have already gotten, how much deeper and fuller with the addition of this little being.
Aster wearing a fresh indigo dyed baby kimono shirt <3
I’ll leave you with some of the Shibori onesies I’ve dyed for Aster, some of them with her as a model! They suit her so well and it’s so special to put them on her and think back on when I dyed them with so much tenderness <3
Not all the onesies below were tied in a shibori style, but I learned how to tie the ones that were from “Shibori Designs and Techniques,” a book by Mandy Southan. The techniques (starting on the top left) that I used were Ori Nui (‘fold stitch’) in pics 1 and 11 which is a sewn technique, Mokume (‘wood grain’) in pics 3 and 4 which is also a sewn technique, and Kumo (spiderweb) in pics 5 and 6. Pics 2, 8, 10, 12 are all simple binds that in some cases I doubled over, pics 7, 9 and 15 were bunched, tied and dyed, and pics 13 and 14 were dipped intentionally and left hanging in the dye bath. So many ways to go about it and all of them so fun! Dyes used: madder root, hardy hibiscus, weld, cochineal, logwood, cosmos, hollyhocks, and dyer’s chamomile, often in a two part process where I fully dyed the onesies one color and then overdyed them after tying or sewing them!
