Two more in the series Astrological Plants of the Squamish Valley -- and the year's not over yet! For several months, I've been looking forward to switching colour gears and working on these two signs together: Sagittarius and Capricorn. Sagittarius is ruled by Jupiter, associated with the colours blue, violet, purple, red-indigo, deep midnight. Capricorn is ruled by Saturn, associated with indigo, grey, black, dark brown, sage green, mottled tones. My aim was to "work in the dark" to create a strong tonal contrast within the overall Astro-Plants series.
Here's Capricorn, which can be viewed in progress here.
The plants assigned to Saturn include leathery-leaved plants like holly, ivy and wintergreen so my choice of our omnipresent salal seemed a natural. (To non-locals, the name's pronounced "sha-LALL" -- as in the Latin name. But maybe everyone knows this if salal truly is omnipresent -- years ago, we saw salal in a Parisian florist's sidewalk buckets). Salal's scrumptious-looking deep blue-black berries, dried in quantity to last the winter, were a staple of traditional First Nations diets. My mouth was watering as I tried my first -- and last -- salal berry. It tasted just like eucalyptus-flavoured Mentholatum. The painting's rather austere, but it's turned out to be one of my favourites.
Along our Upper Squamish roadsides, salal is often the background to an abundant autumn display of snowberries -- the plant chosen to represent Sagittarius.
You can view it in progress here.
Jupiter, the planetary ruler of this sign, is the champion of berries of all kinds so I couldn't miss with this choice. I know snowberries from our years in the East and, wisely I think, never gave them a taste. I don't remember their growing as abundantly there as they do in our coastal valleys. The sight of them hanging in bright white bundles against the rich dark coppers, deep magentas, and olive-blacks of wet fading leaves has always stirred me.
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