Tag Archives: kangaroo paw

End of year guerilla and dye gardens

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My last guerilla gardening act of the year was to go for a walk in the neighbourhood and scatter the seeds that had not made it into my spring plantings. Maybe they won’t grow but at least they have the chance, and I’m keeping my saved seed turning over.

The seedlings are doing well. Hard to believe the one on the left will become a huge tree and the one on the right will become a spreading prostrate wattle!

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In the dye garden, everything has been doing well. We’ve had only one really punishing day of 42C so far this summer –so things are looking good for now. The daylilies have bloomed beautifully.

The Japanese Indigo came up well, and now the task is to keep it alive through summer.  This time I planted some in pots to see if it does any better than in beside the vegetables. The tiny marigolds in the centre picture are flowering now, and a friend from the Guild has given me some dye marigolds that grow to two metres.  They have managed the vegie beds so far! The madder, on the right, is rampant.

The kangaroo paws have done well. The birch trees are barely holding on because brushtail possums are eating their leaves so enthusiastically.  The tansy is big enough for me to use it this year.

Our Eucalyptus Scoparia has suffered from the possums even more than the birches!  But it is still alive and we are trying our third strategy for keeping the possums at bay.  I have enough woad to create woad vats this summer!  And I’ve saved seed from the dark hollyhocks.

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And–this year I’ve seen skinks and geckos but also this wonderful creature!  Something is working well in our backyard.

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Filed under Dye Plants, Eucalypts

Kangaroo paw prints

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For my birthday this year, my beloved bought me some kangaroo paws.  They started blooming about a week after they went into the ground in march, and they are still flowering.

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As I started dyeing fabrics for the Leafy Log Cabin workshop (details here), I decided to try some of the oldest blooms in the dye pot.  Too exciting!

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Decidedly overexcited by this experience, I wandered out on my bike the next day to deadhead the kangaroo paws at a nearby intersection (there are so many).  They were not red–and they did not give a print.

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But I did find a couple of mulberry trees in fruit, and I had a lovely ride and collected E Cinerea leaves… so a lovely afternoon just the same. How’s your dyeing and foraging going?

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Filed under Leaf prints, Natural dyeing

Island books

After the recent India Flint workshop on the Island Book, I took home enough paper and ideas to make a second book.  In the upper images you can see my post-workshop efforts with dye plants local to me, and in the images at the bottom, some pictures of the Aldinga Island Book.

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Filed under Leaf prints, Natural dyeing