Featured Plant: Japanese Indigo (Persicaria tinctoria)
"Of all the things I wondered about on this land, I wondered the hardest about the seduction of certain geographies that feel like home--not by story or blood but merely by their forms and colors. How our perceptions are our only internal map of the world, how there are places that claim you and places that warn you away. How you can fall in love with the light.”
Years ago when I first came across this passage from Ellen Meloy in her memoir The Anthropology of Turquoise: Reflections on Desert, Sea, Stone, and Sky, I closed my eyes and considered the lights and shapes that I love. Blue was the first thing that came to mind. Vivid memories of expansive cobalt skies juxtaposed against red sandstone cliffs came into focus. That Utah sky has always been my home, and one of the things I’ve missed most when I’ve lived out of state. Over the last few growing seasons I’ve realized my passion for dyeing with indigo is tethered to my sense of place. I love how Japanese indigo allows us to coax these comforting celestial colors down to our plane where we can gently hold them in summer-calloused hands.
