Project Presentation
Sharing
This quarter the concept of sharing has been reinvented through the recognition of sacred spaces in which we share ideas, stories, hopes and grow in patience, compassion, and love. The kindergarten class at Lincoln, the Gifts of the First Peoples Garden at Skokomish Nation, and our time together in the AEC program have been places in which people and plants have flourished because of the intention and support that have guided hands in nurturing and tending radiant life.
I will briefly discuss my participation with the plant community of the Gifts Garden, as well as my curricular involvement with the children at Lincoln.
I will share the linen fibers that I dyed with plants harvested at the garden, as well as the manifestation of the plant color that has been lovingly imparted in the fiber and then the wearer.
I will also share two books that have imparted much wisdom to me this autumn.
Autumn
-season of change, transformation
-leaves turn, fall
-shedding
-core revealed
gifts garden
-shedding of drooping stalks, matted leaves
-cutting back
for concentrated energy in roots:
prepare for winter,
new growth in spring
cycling
-transforming
-reusing
cut plants for medicine, dye
Equisetum telmatia horsetail
Gaultheria shallon salal
Baptista tinctoria wild indigo
gathered from garden
hung to dry in my home
linen mordanted
salal
-leaves
-with disease/insect marking and without
-cooked for days over woodstove and electric stove; fibers immersed in heated dye baths for two hours
-water evaporated; more water added, dye bath water becoming darker, more concentrated
-essence of plant revealed
-transformation like that of leaves
pigment exposed
horsetail
-leaves
-gathered gifts garden oct and 11 nov
-chopped, soaked overnight
-dye bath heated, fiber dyed two hours
wild indigo
-leaves
-gathered gifts garden
-hung to dry at walnut
-different genus than Indigofera tinctoria
-soaked in water
garden
essence of plants, revealing self gradually
patience and intention in interacting with plants, growing wildly
tending with
listening to plants
guided by hands of predecessors
healing empowerment
-understanding physical manifestation of spiritual nature
-essence of ego, energetics of self and plants
-plant allies
-relationships strengthened through moons and experiences with plants
