Botanical Garden Bounty

I continue to be enthralled with natural dyeing/eco printing/whatever you want to call it.

I call it fun!

Even though it is (mostly) unrepeatable and not really predictable, I find it to be the most addictive thing that I have ever done.

I can see why people like India Flint dedicate their lives to it (even though I know that there is so much more to what she does).

I am indebted to the path that she and so many others have blazed in the call of creating with wild color.

I have been spending most of my spare time at my dyeing pots.

I went over to the SC Botanical Garden in Clemson this week and met with one of the horticulturalists (thank you John!).

We spent a little bit of time under an ailing eucalyptus tree that they have, talking about what I was doing, what they were doing for/to the tree.

They are going to wait a bit longer and allow the soft stems to grow more, then clip several in order to propagate them.

I was allowed to harvest a small bag of green (but mature) leaves as well as all I wanted from under the tree.

As you can well imagine, I came home with a grocery bag full of leaves and several pic es of the beautiful bark.

I was also allowed to harvest leaves the other eucalyptus there. 

It is an E.cinerea with the largest leaves that I have ever seen on one. Some of them were as larges as 4-5 inches wide.

But then again, I haven't seen that many mature ones before.

Here's an experiment with some of the leaves from both varieties as well as fresh vs old leaves on linen.

I love the colors!

Back to the call of the wild. 

I got the most beautiful prints from a "weed" in my yard! I can't wait to experiment a little more with it.

I'll post photos when I get a chance.