Thursday, June 13, 2013

The dark side


Delicious dark ice cream. Frozen banana, some (also frozen) strawberries & blueberries tossed in the food processor. Add raw cocoa powder to taste and perhaps a dash of agave syrup. Whizz. Enjoy.

The dark corner. Making small exhibitions with natural dyeing experiments. It's a vintage pillow case on the wall, dyed with pine cones and gall nuts - gathered in my own tiny woods (as is the table cloth in the picture above). The lambskin is home tanned (recipe: salt, alum, patience & elbow grease). And yes, we do occationally eat our lambs - the ones that tend to grow up and butt you in the butt (like in la derrière). Which is very annoying! I'm speaking from experience here!

Geranium phaeum, very dark geraniums, which are all over our garden right now. They are so beautiful, in their own simple, understated way.

Dark, fat vanilla pods, chopped up for making shortbread (here you can imagine the fragrance of vanilla, mixed with lemon peel and rosemary) ...

... and making embellished shortbread with almost black pansies. (which I'm also going to dye with, as soon as I have gathered enough). Almost, but not too pretty, to eat.



... ... ...

Twilight: A time of pause
when nature changes her guard.
All living things would fade and die
from too much light or too much dark,
if twilight were not.

~Howard Thurman

6 comments:

  1. All of this thrills me, such beauty.

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  2. Mona, you have done it again as always. Love the quote, and your photographs are beautiful.
    It is a happy coincidence reading about your ice cream. I made some a bit ago with frozen bananas, frozen strawberries and frozen raspberries with some broken up chocolate covered toffee. Oh, it was good! Slurp. I want some of that beautiful shortbread.
    Love to you, E.

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    Replies
    1. Um, chocolate covered toffee! ... perhaps next time. I did add a handful of almonds too, which gave it a nice crunch.
      I'd love to make you some shortbred - I'm afraid we have a bit of a distance problem here.

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  3. Gorgeous set of photos : ) - we often make frozen banana ice cream but haven't put cocoa powder in yet (my son has lots of allergies and has only recently been tested for cocoa, which he can now have!)next time we will!!! maybe tomorrow : ) I love your natural dyeing experiments, it looks such fun and you get such lovely results : )

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  4. Yes, dyeing really gives me the thrills, it's the whipped cream on my waffles :)
    Good for your son, that he can have cocoa, it's not only delicious, but also alimentary.

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