Tee Time!

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By Gerry Wendel, GR Founder and Team Member

Preparation: It takes about three minutes (per tee) to properly fold each t-shirt and rubber band it.

The mixing of the magic colors: This time it’s blue, green, teal, and purple. Dye, salt, and hot water are thoroughly stirred together. The six small buckets could hold three to five t-shirts each. Placing them initially in the dye is easy, but gloves went on first; who needs lime green fingers?

Keeping track of the time involved a lot of clock watching. When you have six buckets of t-shirts “cooking” at once, you can easily lose track of the timing for each one!

Next step was carefully pulling the t-shirts out of the dye without unraveling them, then gently squeezing excess dye out, finding space in a bucket with a different color and pushing the yet to-be-dyed other half of the t-shirt in.



As shirts completed the colorization process they're moved along to a holding area to cool off after which they were laid out or hung out in the sun and rinsed thoroughly.

Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. The process of dying, holding, and rinsing took six hours. I admit that I took a little break to check on the Groovy Reflections page and to have some trail mix and a diet ginger ale. I also sat down for a short while; the middle of my back was not very happy with me!

Drying in the sun.

One little snag: Not enough places outdoors to lay out or hang shirts. So the dryer had to help. It was starting to get dark outside and leaving the shirts out overnight was not an option; so in the dryer some went!

Ready for ironing!

And now the ironing has commenced. Ironing also sets the color and the shirts look great when they’re pressed.

My favorite part of the process? Taking the rubber bands off the just dyed and cooled off tees and unfolding them. It’s like finding a surprise inside each time, almost like those little prizes in a Cracker Jacks box that caused you to shove your hand into the box to get it all that sooner.




Here's just some of the finished products!

"Self-Portrait" via phone!

Okay, I admit it. I picked one out for me!

And here's one of my faves below. All have a heavy dose of Peace and Love in them. And plenty of GRooviness too.

For more info on these GRoovy tees, just visit the Groovy Reflections website by clicking here.

If You Could Go Back to the 60’s …Part One

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By Groovy Reflections Team Members Gerry, Paul, and Joe

Recently, we asked fans and followers of Groovy Reflections “If you had a time machine and could go back to one of these times, but only one, which would you choose? The four choices were:

• Haight-Ashbury area of San Francisco and the 1967 Summer of Love

• 1969 Woodstock Music and Art Fair

• The Village, Lower Manhattan NYC During Folk’s Heyday: Dylan, Guthrie, etc.

• Cavern Club, Liverpool and Carnaby Street, London in the “Swinging 60’s”

Our Groovy Reflections team thought about it too and here’s what three of the team members said:

Gerry: Are you a dedicated follower of fashion?

It was a VERY close choice between the Summer of Love and Carnaby Street, but MOD won out for me as I envisioned shopping at Mary Quant and hanging out with people resembling members of the Small Faces. The mini-skirt made a bold statement in fashion and independence; you had to be downright groovy to wear one.

I was too young to properly participate in any of the choices in the poll, but the thought of being transported to Swingin’ 60’s London just for a short time...oh yeah! The fashion, the music, and the accents! Would the Brits laugh at me when I say “kawfee”…oh wait, tea is the drink of choice.

Paul: The Village. I’m a folkie that loves music and words that come from the heart: Music that speaks not only to the people but is ABOUT the people. Folk music tells a story, sometimes happy, often sad. In the words of Phil Ochs, “there but for fortune, go you or I”, and as Pete Seeger said, “there are many kinds of folk music, go to China and there’s Chinese folk music, Russia and Russian folk music, there’s as many kinds of folk music as there are folks”.

I love a good story and just can’t imagine wandering into places like Gerde’s Folk City, The Bitter End, and the Village Gate and hearing people like Arlo Guthrie, Odetta, Bob Dylan and Tom Paxton playing their latest tunes for nothing more than pocket change when the “hat” was passed.

Imagine hanging at Dave Van Ronk’s apartment while folks like Joan Baez, Richard Farina or Ramblin Jack Elliot show up to critique each others work? You could wander the coffee houses and bars on MacDougal Street or the infamous Bleeker Street and see Peter, Paul and Mary or maybe Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel.

Pass through the Arch at Washington Square Park and hear an impromptu jam session with Tim Hardin or Richie Havens and so many others! I would love a chance to relive the most famous and prolific time in the music of the people, by the people and for the people!

Joe: Hmmmm….I was there. I lived thru the 60’s, starting them as a 7 year old and ending them as a 17 year old. Old enough to see what was going on, too young to participate. Woodstock? Too muddy. San Francisco….pretty cool. The Village? Also cool, but not as cool as LIVERPOOL!!

Watching the baby Beatles grow would be the best use of a time machine for me, out of the four choices given. Keep Carnaby Street, I’ll take The Cavern Club. And while I’m there, I will teach John and Paul a thing or two about songwriting! I’ll tell them to write a song about a day in the life…….And then…………I woke up, fell out of bed…

But wait, there’s more! Click here for part two…

And if you haven’t taken the poll yet, click here.

Flower Power: Back to the Garden By Jayne Lamp

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The term groovy itself takes me back to my youth but the one phrase that really sticks in my mind is Flower Power. Back then there were flowers everywhere, in our hair, on our clothes, on walls and on the side of VW vans.

Flower Power is the beauty of the real thing. As a young child, I remember coming home through the woods after school and finding my Father out in our yard, working in the flower beds. I would spend hours with Pop, learning all the names and discovering the difference between a new sprout and a weed. I marveled at the colors from spring until fall, when winter would come and the flowers would sleep until the warmer weather came again.

I now carry on that tradition of flower beds. When we first moved into our current home, there was just one lone Japanese Thorn Apple bush in the yard. That spring we bought our first rhododendron, which our oldest child accidentally split when the ramp he was jumping with his bike slipped. Also that year we started out first veggie garden. I will never forget my husband and I out there with the four children, him working the rototiller and the older ones wanting to till too. Well let's just say they tried. We planted, watched, waited, and then enjoyed the fruits of "our" labor.

Now sadly my babies are all grown, some with children of their own so I have turned my full attention toward my gardens. Yes gardens. With just a garden claw, along with my other standard gardening tools, I, in my own humble opinion, have created a garden oasis.

The fun begins with a trip to the local nursery to pick out the flowers. When I first started our garden, I never gave a thought that some plants die and never return. Ah, the annuals! Then my husband suggested perennials, and I asked him, “What are those”? Well, I found out quick! They come back every year! Eureka, I thought, and since then have not looked back.

That was three years ago and today I have several gardens scattered on the property. On one side of the garage, running down along the driveway is my English Garden. This one has spiderworts, daisies, and my much loved Buddleia (the “fancy” term for butterfly bush) and an assortment of other plants. Near the veggie garden is the Lily Garden. On the hill is the Desert Oasis; full of red hot pokers and various grasses as well as watermelon, cucumbers and zucchini. And the last bed is our hibiscus garden; so far I have found thirteen different one's for our area.

And while I do my gardening I make a supreme effort to always conserve and think green. I catch rainwater with a system improvised with watering tubes from my husband's shop. My youngest son's crib serves as the new bed for my strawberries. But the best part of my gardening is sharing what I learned over the years with my youngest grandson. To see the joy and delight on that boy's face when he picks a tomato he helped grow! For me, to say the least, Flower Power lives on, only now it evolves into on a whole other meaning for me.

Thanks Groovy Reflections for conjuring up some memories!

Written by Jayne Lamp, Guest Groovy Reflections Blogger