Rambling in the Woods

I am fascinated by historic villages and take every opportunity to visit them so recently we went on our annual trip to Upper Canada Village.  I enjoyed a day of strolling through old buildings that I have been to many, many times but still enjoy. In one of the buildings this caught my eye:

These skeins of wool had been spun and dyed in the village. In fact, while we were visiting, an interpreter was preparing another dye bath. Behind the house, in a large cast iron pot over a fire, she was boiling some logwood . Eventually my brain kicked in and I thought ‘Hey, she’s using a cast iron pot. Iron. Isn’t iron used as a mordant? Couldn’t the pot change the colour of the dye bath?’ This sounded like a science experiment to me.

Since Mullein is quite plentiful right now and I had read somewhere that it could be used as a dye it seemed like the obvious choice for my plant material.

I put 300 grams of chopped plant material – stalks, leaves and flower – in a cast iron pot with 16 cups of water. I put another 300 grams from the same plants into a stainless steel pot with 16 cups of water. I brought both pots to a boil, let them simmer for about one hour then let them steep for two hours. I drained off the plant material and was left with two dye baths that were quite different from each other:

The dye bath on the left was from the stainless steel pot and the one on the right was from the cast iron pot. Next came the dying process. I took a skein of Briggs & Little 100% wool that I had pre-mordanted in Alum and Cream of Tartar and divided it in two. I put a skein in each dye bath, which remained in their respective pots, and brought them to a boil. I turned off the heat and let them sit in the dye bath for about eight hours. I rinsed and dried them and was left with this:

The pale green skein on the left was dyed in the cast iron pot and the pale yellow one on the right was done in stainless steel. Since, I wanted a deeper colour I repeated the entire process using 250 grams of plant material in each pot. I re-dyed the wool with this result:

The yellow is the stainless steel pot and the green is the cast iron pot. So there you have it. Two different colours produced by using different pots. Of course now I am wondering what would happen with a different plant material. Goldenrod is about to bloom.

Earlier in the year I planted cucumbers to make pickles. The package stated that the plants would bear fruit in 55 days. Well, it has been exactly 55 days. So, what do the plants have to say for themselves?

The plants themselves are leafy and green. There are no signs of damage despite the fact that this was seen inside the fence:

Very cute I know but let me stress that he was found inside the fence. He was trying very hard to look like a clump of dirt but I wasn’t fooled for a second. I shooed him away but I have since spotted him loitering around the fence. No good can come from this. However, the plants still have plenty of blossoms particularly if you look under the leaves:

Then, if you look closely you will see some of these:

Tiny, tiny cucumbers. Too small to make into pickles but with luck, and no rabbits, they should be ready soon. So, I guess technically, the plants did produce fruit 55 days after they were planted. The seeds are National Pickling and are from McKenzie seeds. They had a very good germination rate, and as you can see, did produce fruit in the time stated.

Last weekend we took ourselves to Bon Echo Provincial Park for a few days of camping. We were off to a great start as it turned out that these were the first four consecutive days without rain in over a month. It has been close to ten years since I last went to Bon Echo and I had forgotten how much I like it. It is most famous for Mazinaw Rock which stands 100m above the water :

To get a closer look we rented canoes

and were able to get a close look at some pictographs:

I understand there are about 250 of these on the rocks around the lake. We certainly didn’t see that many but the ones we saw were truly fascinating. We also saw this tribute to Walt Whitman:

In the late 1800’s an Inn was built as a religious retreat on the land that is now the park. A subsequent owner, Flora MacDonald Denison, was a Walt Whitman fan and had a quote from one of his poems carved into the rock. Unfortunately, I can’t remember what it said and I can’t read it off my photos. Something about the ‘amplitude of time’. Incidentally, the Inn has long since burned down.

There are about half a dozen hiking trails in the park and we chose to do a 9 km hike. The trail looked innocent enough at first but it turned out to be a bit rugged. The parts that were flat had lots of rocks and tree roots and the bugs did get annoying. The parts that were not flat were, well, vertical. It was a bit of a challenge, particularly for the six year old among us, but we were motivated by the promise of a waterfall that was further along the path. The waterfall did not turn out to be as spectacular as we had envisioned :

In fact, it was described as “small and skinny”. It’s true, it wasn’t exactly grand but it was nice in its own way and it provided a great place to have a bit of a break before finishing the hike. Not that we had any choice really, once you start you have to finish.

We also went swimming at the beach, sat around the campfire eating great ‘camp food’ , went to a couple of the lectures and children’s programs and watched some peaceful and beautiful sunsets:

Overall, it was a great little trip, we won’t discuss the part about the dead battery in the van.

We have a lot of stinging nettles around here. They are a nasty plant that blends in with other plants so I never notice them until I touch them. I really didn’t think they had any value and wouldn’t mind if I never saw them again until I found out they can be used as a natural dye. So, if I just chop them up and boil them, which I would really like to do, that is childish, vengeful and a waste of time. But if I chop them up, boil them and add a skein of wool then I am being creative and preserving a tradition from the past. So, I chopped some up, boiled them and added a skein of wool that I had pre-mordanted in alum:

Then, because this can be an oddly addictive hobby, I took some of that wool and used a vinegar modifier to change the shade a bit:

The skein on the left has been modified and the skein on the right is just stinging nettles. The wool began as a natural off-white. I prefer the yellow shade, I found the modifier toned down the colour a bit too much. The best part , of course, is that a patch of nettles has been eradicated which was the whole point.

Yesterday was Canada Day so in the afternoon we headed to our local town to participate in the festivities. We had hot dogs and cake, played in the playground and waited for the fireworks. I think this was the first day in weeks that it didn’t rain so the fireworks were able to go ahead as scheduled and they didn’t disappoint. Imagine these images with lots of loud bangs and people yelling ‘oooh, aaah’.

Before leaving I checked on the progress of the pickles. They have about three weeks to produce cucumbers if they are going to live up to the claims of the package. They are looking green and leafy but I don’t see any blossoms and I don’t know if that is a problem yet.

I built them a trellis to climb using old boards and chicken wire that I found in the barn. Some of the plants are taking my advice and and wrapping their tendrils around the wire, others are pretty determined to go their own way. The dill is up about three inches and the garlic has produced its scapes which I have dutifully removed so it can concentrate on making a larger bulbs.