It is an invasive plant, but oh, so beautiful. I do my best to keep it from going to seed but its craft is much greater than mine.

But this is a pretty good haul. I will save some for planting next year and I will cook the rest into dye.

I do have a few plants that have escaped last year’s dragnet, and today I am going to harvest the leaves and make woad balls for dyeing this winter.

And next spring this biennial friend will flower and attempt to make more seeds.

It is not full, but I got a respectable number of leaves. I read somewhere that the leaves of plants that have bloomed (i.e. two-year-old plants) do not provide good pigment like first-years, but I heard somewhere else that you can harvest even the sophomores. Feeling cautious, I tried to avoid the bloomers.

After carefully removing any fauna from the flora, I got to work cutting the leaves with scissors.

I finished cutting; it did not take very long, but next time I will wear hand protection. The snipping reduced the volume in the bucket something considerable.

I did not weigh my leaves, but I can see that if I want to process a lot of woad, I will need quite a bit more. This is probably a good amount for a first go.

The only thing that everyone seems to avoid is using a food processor, I started by pounding the leaves with a 1 x 2 board, not very effective.

This shovel is usually used for sod removal and dirt leveling when I am making sidewalks (a habit I have picked up) but it should work well in this capacity, too.

arm workout commences

Yes, I stopped after three minutes. And I began to ponder the meaning of time.

What do we think about when doing repetitive work? I do a lot of repetitive work and rarely find it to be dull or monotonous. But add in a bit of physical labor and the seconds seem to stretch.

I think I went inside the house to get coffee during this interval. But the mixture started to feel and sound smushy, so I thought I would go back to my stick.

You can still see leaves, but there is some liquid starting to appear at the bottom of the bucket. The process is akin to fermenting cabbage; the liquid gradually appears and you gradually feel like you are getting somewhere.

It is more or less holding together, but I think it needs a few more minutes. Funny, time is moving a lot faster now.

I am going to stop here and make some balls. I will wear gloves, as the mixture will stain anything it touches. Just ask my pants. The smell, by the way, is magnificent. Legolas the elf was right, as usual, when he said that the “green smell” is better than much sleep.

I pounded in the right-hand bucket and squeezed into the left-hand bucket.

I will leave them outside during the day and then put them in at night, as we have had very heavy dew this year.

I am going to try making a basket of my pine needles once they are dry. Stay tuned.