The Forest Path - May 2020
Lovely May. This last month can be summed up by colorful textiles, the expanding greenness of the spring forest, and rapidly growing lambs. Outside, the sheep enjoyed sunny days of trimming our huge bigleaf maple tree. They LOVE the leaves and will eat anything they can reach, which helps us by keeping the low branches from covering the ground. One the other side of the window, the sunlight adds a warm glow to whatever is on my worktable.
The ferns always make such dramatic entrances. The unfurling frond is a swordfern and they are covering the forest in their bright green color. Maidenhair ferns are my favorite for their lacy look, striking black stems, and the crown-like shape their fronds create.
May feels like the best month for little Kelly Creek. It’s pretty and green, but not yet overgrown as it will be later in the summer. This month we spent many hours in its peaceful company and didn’t have to duck under leafy branches or arcs of tall salmonberry canes.
Of course spring means rain in the Pacific Northwest, which means happy spring mushrooms. These pretty green turkey tails were found growing by the creek while clumps of big mushrooms tried to take over our garden beds.
Our sheep got lots of attention over the last month as we worked on getting the lambs used to our presence. As you can see, the older sheep appreciated the company too!
Our lambs are curious, friendly little ones. Opal, the dark brown lamb, is talkative and gets so eager for treats that she’ll try to put her front hooves up on one of the adults to get you our hand first. Eamon is the light brown lamb who keeps getting lighter. That’s him in both the middle photo and the third one! They were taken several weeks apart and you can see the growth on his horns as well as his lightening color. Compared to his birth color, he looks like a different sheep! With the light color around his eyes and mouth, we always knew his color would fade but it’s still been surprising and fun to watch how quickly his wool is changing.
Not to leave out our other woolly pet - our angora bunny Bramble celebrated his third birthday in May! He celebrated by taking a nap in the middle of the kitchen floor and then hopping around in the sunshine eating his favorite wild plants.
We cleared an entire hillside of vinca and, with the whole family’s help, built terraces to plant my indigo plants. The fences that create the terracing are made from branches of laurel trees that we cut down from another part of the property. Laurel is an invasive species that can take over large areas pretty quickly so we’re trying to remove as much of it as we can. We’re happy to have cleared so much of two unwanted species to make room for growing more color!
This jar of murky, green liquid is actually indigo that I grew last year and believe it or not, this green liquid created these beautiful blue colors! The leaf design is my take on creating an image of the indigo plant, dyed in indigo. You can learn how I created the design in this post. The other fabrics, along with the colorful cotton I dyed last month, are available in bundles of coordinated colors in my shop.
I can never get enough of the beautiful blues of inidigo. The first photo shows a detail of a larger piece I made that was inspired by the salmonberry plants that grow abundantly here. You can see more photos and the inspiration behind the elements here. The pouch was a gift I made using some of the same fabric available in my shop.
Aside from all the glorious green, colors in the forest were a little more subtle this last month. After the showy flowers of April, we had to look a little closer to see May’s blooms. The cups with the tiny pink petals are fringcup, and the little white flowers that bob on the end of their delicate stems have the whimsical name of inside-out-flower.
Gardening in the forest can be frustrating at times. Between the shade of the trees and the sheep that break in and eat the pea seedlings (twice! Naughty Flint!), our garden isn’t as robust as others in more sunny locales. It’s all worth it though, to harvest the perfect, colorful salad at dusk as owls hoot from the nearby trees. Kids in our homeschool program helped plant the seeds, thinking that they would be here to enjoy the harvest. We miss them terribly and not just because we are having a hard time eating all the lettuce ourselves!
We don’t see too many sunsets because of the way the trees block our view of the west, but this May sky was glorious. There is much beauty to be thankful for, even as we’re sad to have canceled all our programs this season.
