Lisa and I were busy yesterday preparing--we dyed our easter eggs (thanks Annie and Tom for saving the white ones for us!) using onion skins and turmeric. We wrapped the eggs in the skins to add some effect.
Here I am at the big reveal:
Look how cool they turned out!
Larisa gave us the tip to throw grains of rice in between the onion skins to give it that speckled look. The dye even seemed to get darker and lighter in spots over time, too.
You can also use cabbage and beets for dyes, but we kept it simple. We also didn't soak them quite as long as suggested, so they could have been dyed even darker.
Today Lisa kept up with our easter egg hunt tradition and hid plastic eggs for me around the yard. Yet another year with no candy inside, but I'm OK with that. I don't know if Vivian is, though.
It has been a cool spring, so there hasn't been much to report on recently, except that things are very slowly waking up. Our peas are only about 6 inches high -- this time last year we were harvesting already.
We were excited to see our pileated woodpecker returned to the neighborhood -- we haven't seen any for a few years:
Our lovely redbud is blooming at a glacial pace, but should be at peak in just a few more days...
And one of our dahlias is just starting to peek out of the ground! Thanks to our most recent issue of Sunset (thanks Christie and Julie), I've recently become aware of a 45 acre dahlia farm just south of Portland. Heaven.
