Today it was raining cats and dogs outside (Raincouver am I right?), so the group decided to meet online to work on our workshop planning.
With guidance from Susan, we made a lot of changes to our handout (which you can see if you attend the workshop this Saturday, June 1st!) and had a lot of fun playing around with Canva.
A lot of research went into creating this handout. While I was researching about dandelions and its uses, I was reminded of the time my mom went out into the backyard one summer when the dandelions were taking over our lawn, to pick some dandelions to use as tea. My family has a history with dandelions as they would take over our lawns and flower beds, preventing my grandma from growing any vegetables or fruits. We would view them as weeds and every year would try to find some kind of weedicide to get rid of them. However, one year, my mom found this article online and decided to uproot some dandelions from our backyard to use for tea. Everyone in my family thought she was crazy, but as they say, mother's are always right... She boiled a handful of dandelions in some water and got us to drink it. It was slightly bitter because the ones she picked were quite old, but with a dash of honey, it was very warm and delicious. I remember her mentioning that instead of having to buy dandelion leaves which were being sold at various grocery stories for an insane price, we have it "for free outside!".
This change in perspective made me think: "What is a weed exactly?". Although dandelions do match with the definition of a weed, "a plant that is growing where it is not wanted", it has it has many uses to the point that a lot of various cultures and scientists consider dandelions to be an herb instead of a weed! Pg. 18 of this Indigenous Booklet by the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe has some good information on other uses of dandelions: https://www.jamestowntribe.org/history/Tze-whit-zen%20village%20site.pdf
After gathering all the information, we spent most of the time making the handout look aesthetically pleasing and included our own little flare here and there! A lot of problem solving was done to create borders using various images (cropping, rotating images, etc.), as well as the question every so often, "will we be able to print in colour...?".
I'm very excited to share our knowledge with everyone attending the workshop on Saturday! There's so many things we've learned along the way, not only just knowledge on Permaculture, Dandelions and Weaving, but ideas and themes of reciprocity and thankfulness. We shared a lot of perspectives and various skills with each other throughout this process.
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