Posts Tagged ‘green’
Wolf River apple
Wolf River Apple
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branch broken
tree lacking proper
care and pruning
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bee burdened
pink with blossoming
pollination
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apple swells
the skin smooth, palest
lime and rosy
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picked unripe
to escape worms, deer
and apple fall
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Copyright Jane Tims 2015
small green world
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As I gradually put away my Christmas decorations, I am a little sad about disassembling the vignettes I created – a group of carolers skating on a mirror pond, a serene stable scene, a lighted Christmas village.
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To see me through the rest of winter I have created another small world in a glass cloche, a moss and lichen garden under glass. I picked the moss before the first December snow and it has done well for a month. The moss leaves are bright and there is new growth on some of the lichen tips. The terrarium even has its own little climate and ‘weather’ – days when the glass is clear and dry, and days when the glass is foggy and you can see a faint mist among the mosses.
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I love the ‘green-ness’ of this miniature world. Green mosses, sheltered by the green leaves of my Lipstick Vine (Aeschynanthus lobbianus) and guarded by my green, four-clawed Chinese dragon. Green candles.
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While the world outside is cold and white, I have this tiny green world to remind me – spring is only weeks away.
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Copyright 2015 Jane Tims
green flame
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In the afternoon, on a sunny day, the light from the stained glass window in our stairwell finds a place on the wall of our living room. For a few moments, blues, reds and greens create a gorgeous splash of colour. Yesterday afternoon, the spotlight settled behind the curtained door to the library. And a green flame shimmered among the folds of fabric, a reminder of the greenery slumbering out in the yard, beneath the snow.
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Copyright 2014 Jane Tims
harvesting colour – the vegetable stand
Gardens are bursting with fresh produce and we have gone to the farmer’s vegetable stand every couple of days to get our fill of locally grown food. We usually look for new potatoes, yellow wax beans, beets, carrots, green onions and zucchini.
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vegetables at the farmer’s stand
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This year, as a result of my ‘harvesting colour’ project, I am more anxious than ever to collect those carrot tops and the abundant leaves of beet and radish. Cooking these leaves in my dyeing ‘cauldron’ fills the air with the savory smell of vegetable soup, and makes me wonder what colour will emerge from the dye pot.
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beet leaves and stems ready for the boil
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Orange carrots, red beets and scarlet radishes … I am sad to say my expectations were low. I was certain every batch of leaves would yield yet another shade of brown. For radishes and beets, I was correct. Beautiful browns.
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my hand-spun balls of wool from radish and beet leaves … the pink is from my earlier tests with pickled beets
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Imagine my delight when the carrot leaves yielded a bright celery green!
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dye and wool roving from a boil of carrot tops
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I tried to repeat the colour on a second length of wool roving, but the second simmering gave me a gold shade of brown. The dyestuff had offered up all its green colour in the first boil!
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colours of wool obtained from the first and second boil in a dyestuff of carrot tops
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vegetable bin
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most look for
vitamins and
anti-oxidants
seek the colourful plate
look at the farmer’s display and see
carrot orange
radish red
spinach green
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a dyer looks
for juicy leaves
and the possibility of yet
another shade
of brown
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Copyright 2014 Jane Tims
an attempt at ecoprinting
After our drive to Canterbury over the weekend, I was anxious to capture some of the roadside flower colour in my ‘harvesting colour’ experiments. I decided to try a technique described by India Flint in her book Eco Colour: Botanical Dyes for Beautiful Textiles (Interweave Press, 2010). ‘Ecoprinting’ involves bringing a plant into close contact with a fabric in order to transfer the colour to the cloth. I am very impressed with the effects shown in Eco Colour – prints of leaves, flowers and berries.
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For my experiment I tried a handful of the Forget-me-nots I collected on our weekend drive …
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Forget-me-nots in the woods
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a bundle of the purple Lupins growing along the road in my community …
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Lupins along the road
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and a bunch of a ground cover plant growing in my yard, Bugleweed (Ajuga reptans) …
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Bugleweed in the orchard
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basket of Bugleweed
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I only used small samples of cloth … my idea is to use these ‘patches’ to make a little quilt to show the results of my ‘colour harvest’. I arranged a few of the flowers, both petals and leaves, inside the cloth …
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Forget-me-nots on cotton
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Lupin petals and leaves on cotton
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Bugleweed on cotton
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Then I folded the cloth in half, enclosing the flowers like a sandwich …
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flowers folded in cotton
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and rolled the cloth up tightly …
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rolling the bundle tightly
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and tied it with cotton thread …
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flower and cotton bundles
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I put my bundles in a wire basket and steamed them for an hour …
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flower and cotton bundles steaming (as usual I have thrown in a bit of woods and sky)
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After cooling, I opened the bundles, discarded the leaves and flowers, and rinsed the cloth. I was quite pleased with the results. After ironing, I have a pale array of colour. The Bugleweed left a definite lime green. The Lupin a more indefinite green and pale violet. The Forget-me-nots left a faint violet-grey.
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pale colour
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I did not get the flower and leaf impressions I expected, but I will keep trying. There are so many variables, steaming time and ‘unbundling’ time among them. I do hope to see that lovely lime green again!!!
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Copyright 2014 Jane Tims
a moment of beautiful – a button of moss
the space: at ground level, in the grey woods
the beautiful: a little button of moss, emerald green
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Mosses are a beautiful, enigmatic group of plants. Except for a few well-known species, they simply grow unnamed and unnoticed by most people. The beauty of the mosses, especially under the stereo-microscope, where you can see so much detail, was what attracted me to the study of botany in the first place.
We have many species of moss in our Grey Woods. I long to be able to take the time to identify every one. For now, though, I content myself with a few common names and some of my own ‘made-up’ names.
I call this little moss ‘The Button’. Wherever I find it, it seems to grow in a little cushion. Its surface is like velvet and its color is a lovely shade of lime green.
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a button to press
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resist the urge
to depress this plump of moss
firmly with a finger
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will take you up
to the first floor
where the bunchberry blooms
or the second where bracken
planks an ephemeral floor
or the 67th where leaves align
precisely with sun
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or down
to where the roots criss-cross
in confused abandon
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© Jane Tims 2012
a moment of beautiful – traffic lights
the space: above the roadway, at an intersection, in the fog
the beautiful: green, yellow and red traffic lights, seeming to hover, like jewels in the fog
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Traffic lights!!! Beautiful??? Perhaps you will never agree. But I think those lights, when seen on a foggy day, suspended as if from the sky itself, are as beautiful as jewels. Emerald, topaz and ruby.
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Copyright Jane Tims 2012
