Saturday, May 22, 2010

The garden and wild snacks

My cousin Jessica and I spent the first part of our "date" tonight working on the garden - gotta love that kind of a date (followed up with a great meal out and a walk with ice cream cones...pretty near perfect).  I'll have to write a garden update when I've taken photos of its current state - it's that time of year when, thanks to the rain and the warm temperatures, the growth is exploding.  Nothing is growing faster than the comfrey - we were taking bets on how big it would be during our walk there with the girls this week, and Eliza guessed that it might be as high as her waist...it's almost as tall as she is!  Tonight the hum of the bees was tremendous - I counted as many as twelve just from the side I could see. Happy happy garden...
While we were there, the girls were snacking on the new lettuce (lettuce! we've never grown lettuce before!!)...
and then I realized that Anika was doing some selective weeding of our and our neighbors' plots.  She was finding all the sorrel and picking it to eat!  It has a nice tart, almost lemony flavor, and is easy to identify, and would be great in a salad, if it ever made it home with us.
On the way home we pass a honeysuckle vine, and we had to stop now that it has blossoms, for our first taste of the year.  
Do you know how to get the sweet drop of nectar from a honeysuckle blossom?  Well, you pick the flower with the green bit on the bottom still attached.  Carefully sever the green from the flower with your thumbnail and attached you will find a long thin strand - pull it slowly down out of the flower's tube - 
and it will draw out with it a perfect droplet of nectar.  The tiniest bit of heavenly sweetness.

2 comments:

Stephanie said...

We tried to drink nectar by the pound when I was a kid. :) Love that.

Umatji said...

a lovely post! I remember drinking nectar also - it is so good to garden snack!