Reminiscing Golden Hues

On Saturday June 21st I gathered with Maple Street Community gardeners, locals, and friends for a fun onion skin tie-dye workshop to commemorate the Summer Solstice!

Onions are not only a staple ingredient in cooking but their delicate humble skins are full of flavonoids particularly quercetin, a plant based anti-oxidant that produces the yellow to golden brown hues in the skin. When the skins are simmered in hot water the this lumious golden colour is released!

T-shirt that has been randomly tied in various places being pulled out of a pot with onion skin dye.

Pot with onion skins

Those who knew nothing about onion skin dye were gobsmacked and amazed! It was really delightful to see people’s reactions.

Participant holding her onion skin tie-dyed sweater

Participant holding her onion skin tie-dyed t-shirt

What made this workshop special was the joy that it brought to all of us, we learnt something new about our food waste and what we can do with food waste! We also got to connect with one another, some coming to the garden for the first time and meeting one another for the first time. It was affirming for me to witness. Holding gatherings like this matters and is meaningful. One participant Charkie exclamied “You have blown my mind and changed my life! I have learned something new today.”

This is why I want to do things like this.

To make connections in community, to ignite joy, to educate, and inspire creativity. In this there is healing, the remembrance that we are not alone and that there is beauty and joy available in common things.

Stay tuned for the next one!

Freshly onion skin dyed t-shirt hanging on a fence drying in the sun