The weather this spring is so incredible this year. There are breezes in off the ocean, the skies are blue, we have cool weather. And we have had rain. The result is that flowers are in bloom everywhere, and a few miles down the road, we are blessed with 33 acres of an ever-changing and evolving botanical garden, the Conejo Valley Botanic Garden. I believe all the plants are native to California, and most are drought tolerant – perfect for the xeriscape garden – and incredibly beautiful.
With the leak in the Gulf of Mexico becoming increasingly a problem, it draws attention to the environment in a number of ways. Man’s footprint becomes more destructive as world population continues to grow. Global warming continues because of the fact there are too many people and countries who cannot work together to help the entire planet. Politically and realistically, this is not possible.
Plants and animals are threatened by pollution, by being unable to survive in their current environment because the mean temperature is a few degrees warmer – C or F – than it has been traditionally. People are also threatened by the work of other people and corporations in areas before them.
Man-made Disasters
Nearby, we have the Santa Susana Field Laboratory. Nuclear waste and toxic chemicals have leached into the soil and water table. This affects people living nearby – what is the house built on? What is in my drinking water? People who worked there are facing the long-term affects of having worked there – some have died, some are ill, some have not a problem. Now they might get some help.
In the city of Carson, CA, in the Carousel housing track, developed in the late 1960s, another Love Canal is brewing.
You can still find tar on the local beaches from the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill.
Worldwide we can remember the Bhopal gas leak, the London smog disaster of 1952, and too many others to count. Googling “man made natural disasters” gives a lot of stuff.
Endangered Animals
Lizards are disappearing in areas they normally survive. So are frogs, bats, and honey bees. Africa is home to many species which are endangered by the spread of population, commercialized and illegal big game hunting, and the search for ivory or strange aphrodisiacs. Penguins and polar bears are also suffering. And so are indigenous peoples in face of political and commercial expansion.
Foreign Plants
Kudzu has been found to be taking over parts of the the U.S. This is a plant imported from Asia to help cut down on erosion in the American South. This plant is highly invasive. Now, a study shows that it helps increase pollution for all sorts of reasons. More details can be found here.
Invasive Species
Besides invasive plants, invasive animal species threaten much of our environment. The Everglades faces a growing predatory snake population. Boo, hiss.
You’ve Seen a Redwood . . .
Unfortunately, politicians and others in power often have little knowledge or appreciation of the natural world. Ronald Reagan, former California governor and U.S. president was a classical example. Today, we have the infamous Ms. Palin, who is all too willing to shoot animals from a helicopter and continue oil drilling.
Think Locally, Act Globally
Peter Vanderwyden. People in China. Rainforest Alliance. Europe. However, in third world countries, modernization often leads to pollution and destruction of pristine landscapes. “Thinking Green” may involve far more money to introduce than is in a nation’s budget. Nonetheless, creative and inexpensive means for providing improvements can and do exist.
Change is neither easy nor comfortable. Sometimes it is forced on us. Sometimes we choose it.
I don’t like the standard quesadilla I’ve experienced – cheese and meat mushed together in a flour tortilla. Definitely unappetizing. However, not too long ago, we had dinner at the in-laws, and as always, we were well fed. We met up prior to seeing Itzhak Perlman at the Oxnard Performing Arts Center, so dinner was light. And that is when I fell in love with quesadillas a la Drew. And this afternoon, we had some.
These quesadillas are not slap-dash, but require a bit of time. For your pleasure, here is how they are made.
Ingredients
Large flour tortillas
Large peppers – red bell, pasilla, and / or other tasty peppers
Grilled chicken breasts
Sauteed onions mixed with chipotle and ancho powder
Grated jack cheese
Roast peppers over open flame until skin is charred. Steam in bag or closed container to cool. Peel and seed. Grate cheese, slice chicken. Sautee onions until slightly caramelized; add seasoning if desired.
On tortilla, layer cheese evenly over the entire surface. One one half of tortilla, spread out pieces of chicken, peppers, onions, and then place in hot cast iron skillet which has been sprayed with oil. Turn up heat, and cook open-faced until the cheese has melted. Once melted, fold tortilla in half, squish a bit, and let cook a bit more. Remove from skillet, slice and serve with sour cream and salsa.
Serve with Margaritas!
I have spent the last few weekends dyeing with quercitron and cochineal. I did not devote just one day to each color, but did both each day. The quercitron adventures yielded golden yarns and flammegarn, as well as exhaust baths I used with the exhaust baths of the cochineal. For both, I premordanted the yarn with alum and tartaric acid as I wanted to move toward reds and pinks, rather than the red violet or burgundy colors derived from unmordanted wool. I used handspun moorit shetland and commercially spun yarn for the cochineal.
First Dye Day
A couple of weeks ago, when I did the flammegarn, I did my first-ever dyeing with cochineal. Using the recommendations from Trudy van Stralen’s Indigo, Madder & Marigold, I set up my dye bath the day before I planned to dye. 
The wools were in the dye bath for 35 minutes (per van Stralen’s recipe). In the early minutes of immersion, the moorit and white took on orangish casts. These colors deepened the longer the yarn remained in the bath, moving closer toward red for the moorit, and pink for the white.
After 35 minutes, the yarn was removed, and 0.25% of yarn weight of tin added. Thus, 125 x 0.25% = .3125 g. I put in .3 according to my scale. Before adding the tin, the yarn was removed from the bath. The tin was weighed out in a bowl, water added, and then stirred into the dye pot. Tin is added to “bloom” colors toward the red side. Once done, the wools were returned to stew another five minutes, and removed. The moorit became a rather dull wine-red, and the white became a lovely pink color.
Pulling the wools out of the dye bath was a pleasant surprise. Each color was harmonious with the other, intense without being displeasing.
The next step was to immerse the skeins in ammoniated water, to further push the colors toward magenta. The pictures show fairly well the before and after colorations.
The wool pulled up most of the color in the dye bath, but left behind was a pale orange. Another skein of white wool was placed in the exhaust, heated for 45 minutes, and then removed. It had a pale orangish color, but when placed into the ammoniated water, it turned a lovely sea shell pink.
And you would think after all tihs activity I would be done, right? Nope! I had saved my filtered bugs and quercitron dregs, the quercitron dye bath, and the remainder of the exhausted cochineal. All these were warmed up together and yet another
white skein immersed . . . but you will have to wait to see all the final colors in another installment.
Cochineal is a dye native to the Americas, in use by indigenous peoples long before the Spanish came. Once discovered, it became a source of wealth for the conquistadors, and a well-kept secret. It replaced or supplemented many other natural red dyes, such as madder root, used throughout Europe and Asia. As with quercitron, Edward Bancroft wrote extensively about cochineal in his books about dyeing.
Cochineal is derived from bugs that grow on cactus plants. They are collected, dried, and then ground prior to use as a dye. Trudy van Stralen, in Indigo, Madder & Marigold, recommends grinding them up as fine as flour, using an old coffee grinder dedicated to that purpose. I have a molcajete, which I used. The result was very finely powdered bugs. An interesting odor arises when grinding them – rather sour – which is not something I expected. Also, the rather pale bugs release a deep red color. The molcajete was easily cleaned by running water into it while grinding with the pestle. It was then set aside to dry.
Using van Stralen’s percentages, I used 10% of the fiber weight (here, 100 g) for the bugs, and 5% of that for the tartaric acid in the dye bath. Thus, 10 g of ground bugs were used with 5 g of tartaric acid. These were mixed together, and set aside to soak overnight in warm water.
As with the quercitron, I filtered the cochineal solution prior to placing it in the dye pot. Because the cochineal is so finely ground, coffee filters are very slow. Van Stralen suggests old sheeting, which I don’t have, so what I do is piggy back the liquid into a number of filters. When the filtering process becomes very slow, I lift up the currently draining filter, slide a new one into the cone, and decant the liquid from the old filter into the new. I also continue to pour the overnight stock into each newer filter. This time I used about 5 filters, but the process was not particularly tedious. The used filters, bugs and all, are then set aside to be used for later dye sessions.
The final result is a very clear liquid, with little particulate matter.
Ink, Yarn & Beer 