Monday, October 21, 2013

Dogbane kicked my ass

Left: dogbane seeds and silks. Right: milkweed seeds and silks. I will never ever complain again about de-pod-ing milkweed. I worked for at least 5-6 hours today on dogbane, not including the 30 minutes it took (okay, maybe less, but I was so delirious it felt that long) to get the splinter out of my thumb. I had already done maybe 100 pods, maybe less, in the last few days but today was the big batch of over 300 pods; I was determined to finish as I also steamed and stripped milkweed and dogbane (which is not one that should be steamed to strip), cooked those bast fibers, and cooked the milkweed seeds and silks.
The latter looks like watermelon pulp! A lot of the seeds don't want to hang out once I add water, but I'll just see how it all beats down tomorrow. These are tiny quantities but I may still use the white beater for it, especially after Mason and I took it apart to figure out why it suddenly stopped working last week (it was a safety button). We had a class trip visit today as well, and Mason and Kirstin helped me finish off my birthday truffles. I didn't escape tonight's rain, but made it home a hair shy of 11pm. Better than midnight!

1 comment:

Velma Bolyard said...

that photo of the seeds in their matching pots is amazing! i will be interested to see what happens with the seeds left in on purpose. and, really, your title is too funny!