Cohorts Excitement

Blue Jay didn’t disappoint me with her interest level. I handed her a copy of A Dyer’s Garden by Rita Buchanan, which I had obtained from the Pikes Peak Library. (I haven’t yet received the copy that I had ordered from Amazon.) I had some things to attend to in another room.

Blue Jay found me about a half hour later and said that her “ant” was going to be busy for her, because her “ant” had commented about the Yarrow, which, in their southwest Colorado neighborhood was very much like a weed. And she could send us some.

“I really like the yellows! And I really like the sunflower colors… I think that they call madder “madder” because of the warm colors that it makes.” Did I say that she is nine years old, and enjoyably chatty?

I quizzed her a little further. She knew that we already had cosmos in the corner garden in the back yard. It has pink flowers so she didn’t know that it was yellow cosmos. I also found out that in the interim while reading more of A Dyer’s Garden she had grumbled to Lucy “Why does it have to be hollyhocks, I hate the bees.”

I asked her if she could recall from looking at the picture in the book where she had seen some dyer’s coreopsis. She didn’t, however when I mentioned a place on the Rock Island path she remembered. She also liked the St. John’s Wort because of the good, dark colors… earth tones.

Because of the time of year, I’ll acquire some of my plant subjects from the produce aisle at the grocery store that might be free or cheap. I’ll also visit the local green houses to see if there are items I might pick up there also free or cheap. (Not to say I won’t pickup an occasional bouquet.)

When the weather is warmer or if we visit warmer regions, we’ll collect samples, truly natural, on hikes and drives.

These collection efforts will be divided into specific locations with accompanying photos. Hopefully some of them will read like the “The Dye Plants of the Raymond Trail of Pack Monadnock”, or “The Dye Plants of the New Vegetation on the Talus of Mount St. Helens”, and not just “The Dye Plants of the Rock Island Trail, Colorado Springs”, which is just a stones throw from our house.