Our experiments in early August to make natural dyes using pine cones or invasive plants weren’t very successful. Subsequently, Carol did a lot of research and experimenting. When we held Ecojustice Camp in mid-August, she was able to produce some pretty good colors using natural dyes.
Tie-dye cotton t-shirt by Micah with turmeric, choke cherry, and walnut husks
The most successful colors came from turmeric powder (bright yellow), choke cherry (magenta), and black walnut husks (brown). Camper Micah brought in the choke cherries. I’m not sure what Carol’s dye recipes were, but I do know she used an alum mordant.
Right out of the dye vats, the colors were pretty spectacular. After a first washing, the colors definitely faded to some degree. Nevertheless, they were still attractive.
I liked the warm brown of the black walnut husk dye the best. I’ve been collecting walnut husks over the past couple of weeks. If I can just find the time, I’m all ready to cook up some dye with them. And if I do, I’ll post the results here.
After a summer that’s been cool and rainy, it’s going to be hot all week here in Massachusetts. Records are going to get broken. Some local school districts are worried, because of course schools aren’t air conditioned in Massachusetts. We never used to need air conditioning in September.
In other news, clean up continues in Vermont and western Massachusetts after the devastating floods in July and August.
The phrase “global warming” now feels outdated. So does “climate change.” So does “climate weirdness.” In fact, the phrase “climate emergency” is beginning to feel a little dated….
What really amazes me is that there are still people in the U.S. who think climate change isn’t real.
Carol and I have been doing as little as possible over this holiday weekend. We talked about driving somewhere, but driving is always a nightmare on Labor Day weekend. So, we’ve been sleeping late and doing some desultory housecleaning. And I took a couple of walks at nearby conservation areas.
On Friday, I went to Black Pond Bog, a Nature Conservancy property in Norwell.
A small green bee (Augochlora sp.?) pollinating Rough Boneset (Eupatorum pilosum) near Black Pond Bog, Norwell
On Saturday, I took a long walk in Wompatuck State Park. The park covers about 3,500 acres, and you can spend all day walking its miles of trails. It’s mostly wooded, but there are also a number of ponds.
Heron Pond, Wompatuck State Park, Hingham
Getting to Black Pond Bog and Wompatuck State Park both required a fifteen minute drive.
Today, neither Carol nor I felt like driving even that far. So we walked down Main Street from our apartment to Wheelwright Park, and from there into Wright Woods.
Yellow Foxtail (Setaria Pumila), Wheelwright Park, CohassetCardinal Flower (Lobelia cardinalis) in Ice Pond, Wright Woods, Cohasset
We’re extraordinarily lucky to live in a place where we don’t have to drive long distances to find something to see and do on Labor Day weekend.
As a follow-up to yesterday’s post, I took some more photos this morning of the renovation of First Parish in Cohasset’s 1721 Parish House. No more surprises today. The cladding that was removed yesterday — 5/4 pine milled to mimic stone — is associated with Colonial Revival, an architectural style of the mid- to late nineteenth century. So the appearance we had become accustomed to was really a nineteenth century invention.
By this morning, the original framing was clearly revealed. The framing is beautiful in its own right. Here are some photos:
With the clapboards and nogging removed, the framing is clearly visibleJoint between the girt and the post at the northeast corner of the house — you can see a treenail (or trunnel) and other details of the framingThe girt with second floor joists and wall studs
It’s fun to speculate what the front facade of the building looked like in 1721. Based on what we’ve seen so far, and based on what would have been typical of that era, I’m guessing that the windows had smaller panes, and were somewhat differently proportioned (in my imagination, the second floor windows were double hung windows with 9 over 9 sash, and the first floor windows were 12 over 9). There were no pediments over the windows. The cladding was thin graceful clapboards, perhaps with no paint, nailed on with forged nails that had large heads. There were probably no corner boards, and it’s unlikely there was a front vestibule. All of the wood used to construct the house was cut from local trees, and the brick-and-mortar noggin was also of local manufacture. The glass would have been hand-blown, and therefore slightly wavy.
All this raises the difficult question of how we should restore historic buildings. Even if we knew exactly what the building looked like (and we can’t be sure), First Parish does not have the budget to purchase authentic windows with hand-blown glass and hand-made sash and frame. Nor would such windows be energy-efficient. I suspect the neighbors would not like it if we left the facade unpainted; white paint is de rigueur in New England historic districts. Even if unpainted clapboards were acceptable, we would not be able to find old-growth Eastern White Pine, and something like unpainted Western Red Cedar would look wrong. I suspect we would also receive pushback if we had no corner boards (plus, we would have to change the siding around each corner to match, which would add even more to the expense).
In my experience, historic renovation is always a compromise between historically informed research and current aesthetic standards, between practicality and community standards, between what would be nice or best and what the building owner can actually afford. The best way to reach an appropriate compromise is through community review (i.e., going through the Historic District Commission), accompanied by good-faith efforts on the part of the owner of the building.
We’re completing the final stage of renovations on our historic buildings. The renovation began in 2021 with extensive repairs to the 1747 Meeting House. Now we’re working on repairing the crumbling facade of the Parish House, which was built in 1721 by Nehemiah Hobart, the first minister of First Parish. The Livingstone Company arrived today to begin work.
And we ran into a big surprise.
The front facade was wood milled to resemble masonry blocks. Here’s a 1936 photo showing the facade (click on any photo to see a larger image):
1936 Historic American Building Survey photo of the 1721 Nehemiah Hobart House in Cohasset
But there was something completely different underneath that.
Under the existing cladding, we found old clapboards. So the front facade was originally covered with clapboards!
Not only that, but the clapboards that were uncovered may be the original 1721 clapboards. They’re attached to the house with what may be hand-made cut nails with forged heads. Each clapboard is about three and a half feet long, and the butt ends are feathered where they overlap. The outer faces of these old clapboards are well weathered, and it appears that they were never painted. [Update, 8/22: A neighbor stopped by who has a graduate degree in historic architecture. He believes the clapboards are pre-Revolutionary War, but later than 1721. He believes they’re from the 1760s.]
Here are some photos to show you what we found:
The front of the Parish House showing the remaining original clapboardsDetail showing how the butt ends of the clapboards are carefully overlapped
There were some more surprises.
Under the clapboards, the spaces between the frame of the house were filled with old brick and mortar (called “nogging”). Some of the bricks appear to be quite old — not the modern water-struck brick, but irregular bricks that may have been hand-made. This apparently served as insulation and/or fireproofing for the house.
The old clapboards nailed to the house frame, with bricks and mortar under the clapboards — you can also see the back side of the lath and plaster of the inside the house
And there were still more surprises in store.
When the triangular pediments over the first floor windows were removed, it appears that the original opening was for taller windows. We were pretty sure that the windows on the front facade were not original (the sash appear to date from the nineteenth century), and this may confirm that supposition.
You could also see where the ends of the floor joists for the second floor were mortised into the girt or cross-wise beam. Notice how the original window frame apparently went right up to the girt, and the opening has been blocked in with a piece of lumber that is machine sawn, not hand hewn. This means the original first floor windows were probably significantly taller than the existing ones. And you can see a builder’s mark, “XII,” which would have indicated which beam went with which post when erecting the finished posts and beams.
Above the window just to the left of the front door — the builder’s mark is chiseled into the girt above the left edge of the window
We’re now in the process of consulting with the Cohasset Historic District Commission. We received a permit from them based on replacing wood milled to mimic stone. But it’s now clear that this was a much later addition to the building. (I’m guessing it was added at least a hundred years after the house was built, i.e., in the nineteenth century.)
In any case, it has been an exciting day today, as we learned a lot more about our historic 1721 Parish House.
I’ll include a couple more photos below, for those who can’t get enough of historic buildings.
I teamed up with Ngoc Dupont and Matt Mulder, two professional educators, to bring the Ecojustice Camp concept to the South Shore of Boston last week. We didn’t have the best of weather for the camp, with rain showers almost every day, and a tornado alert for early Friday morning. The tornado alert meant that we didn’t camp at Wompatuck State Park, but instead camped at the Parish House of First Parish (where there was a full basement we could retreat to if necessary). Yet in spite of the weather, we had a blast.
We’ve posted photos from the past week on the camp website. Since we only have permission to post photos from camp on that website, you’ll have to click here to see them. The photos will give you an idea of the range of camp activities — from cooking outdoors, to whittling, to ecology simulation games, and more.
Carol and I are still investigating natural dyes. At the moment, we’re looking for dyes that (a) we can use with kids, (b) will work well for tie-dyeing cotton t-shirts, (c) are in season right now and can be easily collected by kids, and finally (d) are plentiful (i.e., we’re not going to collect endangered lichens to use as dyestuffs).
It looks like the most promising dyestuff for our purposes is going to be pine cones. They’re in season and plentiful, readily available, produce a pleasing pinkish-brown color, and I found someone who did tie-dye with them.
Carol and I went and collected some pine cones today (on land where we had permission to collect). The recipe for the dye bath says to soak the pine cones for 48 hours (see the recipe below); I’ve got some pine cones soaking now. But because I’m impatient, I also boiled some for a couple of hours this evening, even though this will probably produce a dye bath that makes a less intense color.
Stay tuned for updates on our natural dyeing experiment.
Update, 8 Aug.: I followed the recipe below fairly closely. The cloth emerged from the dyebath a pleasing light tan-yellow color. But nearly all the color came out in the first washing, so that now we have a very light tan-yellow. N.B.: In her book Craft of the Dyer: Colour from Plants and Lichens (Univ. of Toronto, 1980), Karen Leigh Casselman says she got a “warm tan” color from pine cones with “good colorfastness,” but she used alum and chrome mordant; I suspect, too, that she used this dyestuff with wool, not cotton.
We were not encouraged with our experience using pine cones for dyeing cotton. It’s too bad, because where live it’s easy to find plenty of pine cones. We probably would have gotten better results with a chrome mordant, but we don’t want to use chrome with kids because of the toxicity.
I’m still in the research phase, and haven’t actually tried any of these myself. Many of these appear to be recipes for dyeing wool yarn. Nevertheless, here are some possibilities I found:
Japanese Barberry (Berberis thunbergii), European Barberry (Berberis vulgaris) — bark is said to make a yellow dye: Use plenty of plant material and steep for “several hours.” Then use the mordant appropriate to the textile.
Lesser Celadine (Ficaris verna) — plants/roots are said to make a “buttery yellow” color: Simmer the entire plant (roots, leaves, etc.) in 1 gallon of water for 30 min. Remove plants. Mordant the textile, submerge in dye bath, then simmer (don’t boil) for 30 min.
Unfortunately, much of the material I found online is not entirely useful. Some of the webpages linked to above just say that the plant can be used as a dye, but with no indication of mordants, length of time in dye bath, color-fastness, etc. And many of those dyeing are only interested in dyeing wool yarns, while I’m more interested in tie-dye projects for kids (here’s info on mordants for cellulose, e.g. cotton, fibers). Anyway, I’m planning to do some invasive species dyeing myself, and if I do I’ll give some more details.
Perhaps my favorite fall flower is Joe-pye weed (Eutrochium spp.). There’s something about the color of the flowers and the color of the foliage that gets me, I don’t know why. I often have a strong emotional response to certain colors, and when sunlight catches the dull purple of Joe-pye Weed, I can feel it in my chest. I have no idea why this is so, I just know that it happens.
On a walk this afternoon, I came upon some Joe-pye Weed nest to a rushing stream in the Whitney-Thayer Woods in Cohasset. About a hundred feet of the trail, near one of the crossings of Brass Kettle Brook, was flooded from the torrential rains we had last week. I was teetering along on logs and stones that someone had conveniently placed alongside the trail, when there it was by the side of the trail: those dull purple buds almost ready to burst into bloom.
A capitulesence of Joe-pye Weed showing purple buds, but as yet no blossoms
I’ve been trying to figure out which species of Joe-pye weed this was. I think it’s Coastal Plain Joe-pye Weed (Eutrochium dubium), but I admit that I get confused by the online dichotomous key of the Native Plant Trust (—are the leaf blades triple-veined? —are the stems spotted or streaked with anthocyanin? —what exactly is the shape of the capitulescence?). Admittedly, I didn’t try as hard as I might to figure it out, since the dichotomous key tells me that E. dubium is “difficult to distinguish from related species.” Nor do I really need to know exactly which species of Joe-pye Weed it is — they all have similar flowers which evoke the same emotional response in me.
I almost stepped on this small fungus — it was maybe two and a half inches tall — when I was out for a walk today. I’m not competent to identify it, but between my field guides and iNaturalist, I’m thinking it’s a coral fungus in genus Clavulinopsis. Not that I’m particularly anxious to learn what species it is. I’m more interested in its weird beauty: delicate little sculptural forms rising up out of the woodland litter.
