what I really want to do

I am almost finished planting out the seedlings started by the woodstove, then transferred to the greenhouse, the tomatoes (most of those were planted a few weeks ago but there are strays), peppers, 3 kinds of pole beans with two more coming along, and the squashes (Kogigu, Butternut, and Zombie pumpkins from seed bought at Kew Gardens in November). Cucumbers — a Lebanese one and another, almost white-skinned and very sweet, from seed saved from a sport from last year. Almost finished. And I am doing this gladly, happily digging out areas, making teepees of long poles for the beans, sinking stakes for the squash.

But what I really want to do is organize my outdoor dye area and begin some dye work. Last year I claimed the little deck where our hot-tub was (before it gave up), partly-covered, unfolding a long table for tying up linen, setting up a little homemade table with a hotplate for heating dye vats, with room for racks for drying finished fabric.

I spent days out there with beach stones, hemp twine, a notebook to record mordants and results, and then it was too late in the year to work comfortably outside so I put things away. Until now.

I have a big basket full of cottons, linens, some old sheets, and even some raw silk. I have some ideas in mind but mostly I like to find out what happens when you stir tied cotton/linen into a pot of rose madder, or dip linen heavy with beach stones in indigo, dip it over and over again, letting it oxidize between plunges. What happens. Sometimes this:

Or this:

Human beings have been coaxing colour from plants, rocks, their own urine, seeds, some of these the most unlikely sources, and all of them surprising. You expect one thing and the result makes you catch your breath. I want to take my little jar of cochineal, female insects that colonize nopal cactus paddles, and see what happens when I use alum (for silk) or soda ash (for linen and cotton). I want to look see what happens. Fuchsia, purple, red? And my favourite indigo powder, which I return to over and over, for its skies, its deep water, its moments of transcendence.

I’m almost finished planting the seedlings and while they grow, I’ll be heating the dye pot, my hands blue with indigo, pink with rose madder, surrounded by sky and roses.