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Making elderflower cordial
I paid a third visit to 'my' elder tree (on foot this time), and while a lot of it was still partially or entirely in bud, I decided I could probably snip off sufficient fully-opened sub-sprays to form the equivalent of the thirty heads of blossom required by the cordial recipe. (It's pretty concentrated, which is why it's a lot better value for effort than the traditional 'elderflower champagne', which requires pressurised bottles and only keeps a couple of weeks or so — but it does require more blossom to make. A lot more.)
The branches was alive with bees, but I didn't feel too guilty about depriving them of their food source, as there were no end of fully-opened sprays high up on the sunny side of the tree that no human would never be in a position to rob either of flowers or of berries. And one advantage of picking the blossom this early in the season was that there were far fewer bugs in residence; when adding the flowers to the mix I didn't come across any black fly, and only one or two hoppers and a small earwig. Despite all my efforts I usually end up filtering corpses out with the spent fruit :-(
One advantage of having the blossom in sub-sprays rather than cut off a whole head at a time was that it was easier to fit it into the bowl. It's quite a job to submerge three lemons and two oranges (I eventually succeeded in getting lemons at 50p each from the corner shop after trying two supermarkets, where the shelves were empty) plus thirty heads of elderflower in three pints of water...
The next stage of the process (after boiling the water, dissolving two pounds of sugar in it, and waiting for it to cool down again) is to leave the ingredients to steep for 24 hours "in a cold place". Unfortunately at this time of year the coldest place I've got for a bowl this size is the floor of my living room, at sixty degrees...
I used the spent compost from the little tub of 'microgreens' on my windowsill (which had been through about three generations of seedlings in addition to its original pea-shoots, and was full of compost flies) as top-dressing for my miniature rose in its little pot, having no other means of disposing of it. Several days later, I observe that I now have several red-legged beet seedlings and a couple of coriander stems coming up around the base of the rose! It's amazing how simply turning over soil can make abandoned seeds germinate.
The branches was alive with bees, but I didn't feel too guilty about depriving them of their food source, as there were no end of fully-opened sprays high up on the sunny side of the tree that no human would never be in a position to rob either of flowers or of berries. And one advantage of picking the blossom this early in the season was that there were far fewer bugs in residence; when adding the flowers to the mix I didn't come across any black fly, and only one or two hoppers and a small earwig. Despite all my efforts I usually end up filtering corpses out with the spent fruit :-(
One advantage of having the blossom in sub-sprays rather than cut off a whole head at a time was that it was easier to fit it into the bowl. It's quite a job to submerge three lemons and two oranges (I eventually succeeded in getting lemons at 50p each from the corner shop after trying two supermarkets, where the shelves were empty) plus thirty heads of elderflower in three pints of water...
The next stage of the process (after boiling the water, dissolving two pounds of sugar in it, and waiting for it to cool down again) is to leave the ingredients to steep for 24 hours "in a cold place". Unfortunately at this time of year the coldest place I've got for a bowl this size is the floor of my living room, at sixty degrees...
I used the spent compost from the little tub of 'microgreens' on my windowsill (which had been through about three generations of seedlings in addition to its original pea-shoots, and was full of compost flies) as top-dressing for my miniature rose in its little pot, having no other means of disposing of it. Several days later, I observe that I now have several red-legged beet seedlings and a couple of coriander stems coming up around the base of the rose! It's amazing how simply turning over soil can make abandoned seeds germinate.