garden lab

side blog to supplement 'secret garden', a project exploring the relationship between nature, place, and self. i use this blog to explore ideas, reflect on my process, and document my research.

[secretgardenlab]

pounding imprints of flowers onto a chemise, which was sewn inspired by an 18th century pattern. the white cotton fabric was first scoured with soda ash and then soaked in alum as a mordant. the flower bouquet is made up up of flowers and leaves fallen on the side of the road, my mother's balcony garden, and flowers used by our neighbour for pooja.

i wanted to create a dress for spring. in my head - i was imagining all the fairy tales i'd read and their magical costumes. i wanted to create a dress that a spring fairy might wear.

there weren't many resources for flower pounding that i could find beyond other articles with people experimenting, and i played it by the ear. i started out with roses that i thought would give a deep red, but instead turned purple! it was almost like working with an entirely different medium. by pounding a juicier (watery) flower or leaf without much pigment of its own, and then pounding a thinner pigmented petal on top of it - the colour would spread like a wet wash of water colour. some pigments were more washed out, others more concentrated, others didn't imprint at all!

i had success with layering succulents (very light green wash) under the leaves of the diffenbachia and jade plant. i got yellows and oranges from marigolds and the yellow trumpet, various hues of purple from the red and purple flowers - roses, royal poinciana, jacaranda, and pinks from begonia flowers, pride of india, and java cassia. i wasn't very successful at having the flowers stay in one place while pounding them (i tried! by taping them) but did get some nice effects by having them smoosh around with each other. i would cut up some petals and place them in certain ways to create more figurative shapes.

the greens came from house plants, weeds off the sidewalk, both succulents and leaves. the succulents would give off a very light green wash and leaves from the pothos plant would leave a darker, more defined impression depending on how i used the hammer.

i would keep the flowers i'd collected in the freezer after i was done for the day to preserve them.

the first night of pounding was met with a resounding (NO) from the neighbours so i had to devise a way to keep the sound to a minimum. i would place a cuttingboard on a towel and hold my hand closer to the top. i definitely gained some arm muscle while doing this for 3-4 days.

the dress in its current state:

[secretgardenlab]

weed walk... the aftermath

so i was a bit lazy in taking pictures of all the weeds i collected (they've been put to dry now... maybe i'll take more tomorrow). but here's some of it!

so i was trying really hard to ID this plant - i'm not exactly sure where i collected it from, and it kept coming up as solanum nigrum or solanum carinolese - both of which are edible berry plants! solanum nigrum is known as black nightshade and has these black berries which have such a unique wild taste. the leaves are edible too. solanum carinolese has yellow berries and is also known as horsenettle - apparently, poisonous. i'm going to go have a better look tomorrow... i really don't remember where i collected this.

above are (1) digitaria ciliaris which is a grass - also known as summer grass or crabgrass and (2) alligator weed it's considered a major threat to eco-systems, highly 'invasive' and is semi-aquatic so settles well along drains and waterbodies too. further, it has a 'commensal' relationship with mosquitoes by providing for it a breeding ground - and gaining nothing in return. a toxic relationship if i've ever seen one.

i guess it's important to note that i am mostly going by google lens and trusting the first few results after doing a bit of comparing. this is not a hard and fast ID!

(1) i had a bit of trouble IDing this one as lens was showing conflicting results for each image - alternanthera casacana is the closest ID i could find, but i am not sure how accurate it is, so i will get back to it. it is also known as washerwoman and khaki weed (2) leptochloa cheninsis apparently a serious weed of rice. and a grass. also known as red sprangletop.

(1) common purslane was something found very regularly across the area in patches - a succulent plant, it is 93% water and can be consumed cooked and raw! and is very nutritious. i am considering cooking with it. (2) natal grass... or ruby grass. seen sparingly around the area. a delicate sight.

I've been working on making cyanotypes of the above -- here is one of the creations.

I am planning to make this a part of one of my mini-projects for the garden lab -- a herbarium of weeds found in and around the areas I live. I want to accompany it with the narrative of the various tales of coming of age in this particular natural environment - the neighbourhood I lived in during my college years. And also explore supernatural narratives of speculative fiction. I haven't entirely decided what I'm going to do yet - that's a problem for next week me!

[secretgardenlab]

stepping out / a weed walk in my society

37 days since i last stepped out into the world. i've been home due to a series of unfortunate events. isolated for three weeks and quarantined for the rest :( not a good time for my mental headspace. but i guess i'm slowly figuring out how to move past this.

i wasn't sure what to expect today, as i took a walk around my apartment. i hadn't forgotten what it was like to be outside but it was still jarring. it was a lightly sunny late afternoon, around 4:45. there was a cool breeze flowing and a few people were out. the usually semi-trimmed green grass society lawns were overflowing with weeds. i saw red, yellow, pink, and purple flowers. i had a bag with me where i collected the weeds i found - i was surprised i could recognize a lot of them! i was getting familiar with the world of weeds. i met a sunbathing cat. i walked barefoot across the grass. i found a patch of strange little succulents. it felt really good to be back outside, immediately finding my eyes drawn towards the green and the natural coloured - what kind of plants were these? what kind of flowers? i felt like a kid just excited and grabbing at everything i could see. it felt nice :)

there's this patch of land that runs across the apartment sides. i remember when i was younger - these were OVERGROWN. they had logs and trees and weird plants and weeds and i remember it being a huge long wild nature playground. we would play an obstacle course game of running across from end to end, jumping over the fallen trees and hiding behind thick layers of plants. at some point, the society decided that these areas needed to be flattened as if a firetruck ever needed to come to save someone from the balconies - there had to be space. they removed everything and made it a manicured lawn space. as a 12 year old kid who loved imagining the area as an enchanted forest - i was heartbroken. i haven't thought about this in many years, but as i walked across the space today i was reminded of it.

the lawn space has become a little overgrown (none of its former glory) but there were weeds aplenty to document.

> the plant in the center piece (and also on the right and a little behind in the pic above) with the many white puffs is erigeron bonarienis. it's a pretty common roadside weed and once you start noticing it you can't stop. apparently its seedlings are edible.

> the white petal flower with the big yellow bud is tridax procumbens (daisy family) (gaddi chamanthi in telugu). it's used for medicinal purposes in in folk medicines.

> the spiky looking creature at the bottom is apparently the same tridax flower after achene dispersal -- after the seeds have been dispersed. cute! (above)

> the sort of flat foliage groundcover leaves in the background are calyptocarpus. they have tiny yellow flowers. also known as horseherb. (below)

i found this strange looking succulent patch below! not sure if it was society planted or it just spread... it's called kalanchoe delagoensis (not very good at IDing...) and is also called mother of million's. it can propagate very easily and withstand a lot of environments. perhaps no wonder there was a patch of it! like a huge one! it was so succulenty and goopy...aaaa

(below) now that's a patch of some plant of the amaranthus family... i'm coming across multiple names online. amaranthus spinosus, amaranthus viridis, amaranthas dubious... a bit of a dubious ID for me. also known as pigweed. edible! yum yum yum.

found this big fallen flower (below). so pretty... known as alamanda blanchetti. i can't get over how structurally unique each plant i've come across is. all within 500 metres of me, so much diversity. it's so easy to forget about this and just write them off as 'flowers' or 'greenery'.

unsure of whether the society left this for the 'wild aesthetics' of weeds growing between the cement squares or it just happened and no one bothered to trim these down... landscaping really is a world of its own, huh.

found a little patch of sun in the basement :)

after getting home, i sorted out the weeds i collected to dry them for creating cyanotypes. continued in the next post...

[secretgardenlab]

a new beginning

When I made this blog, my aim was to post every day - little by little - a reflection of what I'd been working on, the things I was discovering - poetry and art and articles and research. I wanted to really try to reflect on what I was doing and document it well - a practice that had sort of eluded me during Srishti classes.

I think I was slowly coming to realise (despite my aversion from the word) that the way I was working was a bit like an artist. I didn't really understand that I could document things 'artistically' - I always felt like a bit of a hack doing that. I didn't know artistic research was a thing. I just figured I worked instinctually and was too inept to do things like the people around me - with their structured and sensible design processes. It was something that caused me a lot of pain - why am I not able to do things like others? Why do I resist it so much? Was I just lazy? Perhaps.

Another thing - I was recently diagnosed with ADHD, something which has put so much of my college experience into perspective. Why I was never able to follow timelines, finish things methodically like others, either work very intuitively in a 'flow' or get so overwhelmed and burned out by simple tasks that I would end up dropping classes. I couldn't figure out why I was so different from others, why I couldn't just stick to things. So many unfinished projects and spoken words. So many fears and insecurities piled up because of this.

I mention this because it's another reason this blog was important to me. I wanted to create a space for me to work slowly through something, little day by day. I wanted to be mindful of the way I worked. That what I thought had value, that I had an ability to reflect and write about the things that mattered to me. That even when things are hard, there are ways of working through it.

We have about a month left to go for this project. I've barely been able to put together a single post. From abruptly being moved home with half my belongings in my PG in Yelahanka, to getting covid, to recovery to a few weeks of feeling very hopeless - every time I started to open this blog to make a post I figured - what's the point? I feel like I have nothing to say (even though I know I have much to say, and then it will pain me that I never took the time to sit and do it) and with a month left, what's the point of starting now.

I guess I am making this post to remember a few things

1) this is not about a project. it is about you and trying to create a habit. you don't have a 'month' left - you have the rest of your life.

2) i like writing. i am a writer. i haven't practiced or written much in a while but i've always felt that it was my first way of communicating with the world. I want to rekindle my passion of words, exploring how i can give life to a place with these words. get creative with writing - even if i think i've forgotten how to.

3) to put my 'all over the place' brain at ease, and instead of screenshotting inspiration and thinking of all the things to do - just take the extra effort of writing it down here, thinking through writing is a process - I remember someone saying this.

4) even if it is awful and horrible, you must post once a day. just try it. see what happens.

5) finding the reasons for 'why' this project - those moments that hit you so strongly and remind you of exactly why i wanted to do this. articulate it - i've wanted to talk about my very strange and unique experience/connection to nature in bangalore for a while. and i cannot seem to find the words. that's okay. try anyway.

i sign off with this first post on my blog. And hope to write a little, every day.

Tonight I will work on the following:

A writing exercise that was once given to me by an old faculty - when i spoke about how sick i was of my first person POV writing style, I felt it was very navel gazey. he told me to write 500 words about a tree. i knew the tree i was going to write about. and then i never wrote it.

and a quote:

haha, that little imagery and the title 'where the sidewalk ends' inspires me - a little imagery of where the sidewalk ends in yelahanka, where the park ends and the swamp reigns free. a little nursery of poems for strange creatures and trees in yelahanka! beautiful :)

I will read some poetry tonight before sleeping, I think.

- a children's poetry book in my room. they are always so playful and whimsical.

- nature poetry on poetryfoundation perhaps