stormy weather

and recycling leaves

I woke shortly after midnight (last night) to what sounded like an explosion but turned out simply to be an over enthusiastic thunderstorm. My big dog, Kubbi, leapt off her bed and dived into my wardrobe. Little Tilly slept blithely on. Lightning kept flashing and flickering followed by thunder that shook the house. The power went out and then the rain slammed down. I lay in bed, wrapped snugly in several layers of wool, gusts of wind woofing their way through the open window (my bedroom window is open year-round) and was grateful to be living in a country that is not under attack from neighbours or insurgents.

It was a long and noisy night but day eventually dawned, pleasantly warm and filled with spectacular puddles. There was a particularly impressive one in the tray I like to work in outside…

Next day

I was about to upload the video that follows, when the power went out again (one of the joys of living at the end of a long tree-lined dirt road is that if it gets a bit windy, there will be times when electricity cannot be delivered. (I haven’t had the funds to invest in a solar power system, so am at the mercy of the supplier.) It still wasn’t being delivered when I arose this morning, so I’ve brought my iPad to the city where I have an appointment and am patching it onto the inter-clouds using my phone. Thus the modern world. (Tolkien was most prescient when he dreamed up the palantir.)

I spent a happy afternoon yesterday feeding the fire with the myriad twigs the storm had provided, and this morning unbundled the dress. I couldn’t video the process, as the wind was too strong and threatened to upset my tripod, so here are a few stills.

The lovely black that is building on the surface of the vat (and is best either rinsed off the bundle before opening or harvested to make ink) reminded me of a paragraph in a book I was reading by candlelight last night.

If the teeth of the taster turned black in the presence of tannin, that suggests to me that either the Loire offerings or that chocolate bar contained iron, unless the drinker had a history of consuming water delivered in old iron pipes in which case the extraordinary acidity of the earlier wines would have compromised their protective enamel surface, rendering it more porous and ready to absorb the tannins. I’m almost inclined to run with the latter hypothesis.

It is a fascinating book called “Drinking with the Valkyries” by Andrew Jefford, and I highly recommend it not merely for the information it contains but the poetic and erudite way in which the author tells stories.

Now, where were we…

If you watched the entire video above you’ll recall me muttering that I wasn’t expecting much green. So of course there is green…less so from the influence of the brass pipe end, more so because often the second or third bundling of eucalyptus can print startling greens after the reds and golds have been exhausted. It’s almost the reverse of what we see in autumn/fall when the green leaves of deciduous trees shed their chlorophyll to reveal the flame-like colours that have been present all the while but not visible behind the green.

Links to the people mentioned in the video

Maiwa

Beautiful Silks

Tim Whitten

And lastly, a link to a writer who is living in a most precarious situation

Larissa Babij