The sky's been low and grey and
spring seems a long way off. My lovely friend came to visit and brought me a
tray of soil – nice! She assured me it was full of hibiscus seeds she’d sown. I put
the tray on the window sill and each day I inspected it as I opened the kitchen
blinds.
Finally, last week a tiny
seedling appeared! Bright, zingy and green, it filled me with hope and
excitement.
I didn’t know much about
hibiscus plants so I looked them up. I discovered
that the flowers are edible and that there are actually a whole lot of flowers you can
eat.
Nasturtiums, primroses, marigolds, violas,
pansies - all look lovely in salads and fruit dishes, in soups and rice, in
sweets, yogurt, cakes, biscuits, jelly. And
I see that hibiscus flowers look fab in the bottom of a flute filled with
Champagne!
So, I'll be asking my Valentine to forget the bunch of
flowers this year and buy me packet of Nasturtium seeds instead! And I’d rather
have a bag of compost than a box of chocs - honest!
Planting seeds is a lovely, slow thing to do on a grey February day. Just push the seed into the compost, enjoy the smell of the damp earth and the anticipation of long summer days. Nature won't be hurried. But eventually, from that tiny seed a whole, flower-filled plant will grow and, in the case of nasturtiums, rampage all over your garden! But you'll get lovely peppery leaves and flowers for your salads and bees will bury themselves in the deep trumpets. I love the way the buzzing reverberates when a bee is deep inside a flower and they come out covered in yellow pollen and almost too drunk to fly.
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| Tonight's tea? |
http://www.nonowenherbalist.co.uk/ (Fabulous workshops if you live in North Wales)