Bali Dye Garden -- Blues and Browns

Ooh! A dye garden!

Dye Garden, Ubud Bali

In Ubud, Bali, I spent an afternoon visiting a dye garden. Dye gardens are rare. Very few people use natural dyes these days, and only a few of those who dye grow the plants they use. So the dye garden was a treat!

This dye garden, run by Threads of Life, provides dyes for local natural dyeing and for teaching about dyes. The dyes, dyed cloth and things made from the dyed cloth are sold at the Threads of Life store in Ubud. The garden is frequently used for natural dyeing workshops (see upcoming workshops: link).

Visiting the Peruvian Amazon--Flooded Forests

The Amazon Rainforest! The very name was romantic. And when I was in graduate school in the 1970s, the rainforest was rapidly being cut down. People predicted it would soon be gone.

I resolved to see it by 1984. Before it was gone.

I actually got to the Amazon Basin in 2011.

A little late.

But, fortunately for me, countries in the Amazon Basin have created great natural reserves to protect the plants and animals. Conservationists point out that some of those reserves are not well-managed and that fine-sounding national laws are not necessarily enforced, but compared to the 1970s, the situation is much improved.

The Amazon Basin is huge. 2.67 million square miles, 40% of South America. The contiguous United States (omitting Alaska and Hawaii) is 3.12 million square miles. The Amazon Basin is the size of 85% of the contiguous United States. Therefore, "seeing it" isn't done in one trip. What I saw was a section of the Amazon Basin in Peru, upriver from the city of Iquitos. (Map of Peru with Iquitos: link. Map of Iquitos showing its position in the Amazon Basin: link The Amazon drains east from Iquitos through the dark green area of the map to the Atlantic in northern Brazil.)

There were two wonders of the world that I knew I wanted to see: 1) forests that flooded 10 or 20 feet during the rainy season, and 2) black and white rivers.

Dye Plants - Old Fustic aka Dyer's Mulberry

old fustic, dyer's mulberry, Maclura tinctoria

Old fustic, also called dyer's mulberry, was one of the most important yellow dyes in Europe from the 16th century to the early 20th century. 

It has a curious history. 

First, old fustic is a plant from the Americas, discovered after 1492 in the forests of tropical America.