Skip to main content

Elderflowers


I was a bit worried that I may have missed the frothy heads of elderflower while I was in Australia. Last year I made some excellent elderflower cordial using the recipe promoted by my very dear friend 60 going on 16 and stocks needed replenishing.  So I have been mightily glad to see the elderberry bushes still sporting their lovely flowers.


I don't think the blogging world needs another recipe for making elderflower cordial but in putting together this year's batch it occurred to me that visually it has to be one of the prettiest of production processes.  So here's my blow by blow account of making the precious stuff - in three photographs!

Comments

  1. 60 going on 1613 July 2012 at 13:42

    Oh, am so envious of your 2012 crop! I was all prepared, as usual (buckets, sugar, citric acid) l but my elderflower bushes have produced precisely two heads this year. That's barely enough for a bottle. I still have one bottle from last year, however, and am saving it for the arrival of a dear friend from South Africa, who is staying for a week.

    Of course, I could have driven around and scavenged but it wouldn't have been the same; I much prefer making cordial from my own elderflowers, which are well away from traffic, car fumes, agricultural spraying etc.

    So, for the first year in ages, we have no cordial and no elderflower champagne . . . just constant and torrential rain and flooding. Not to mention very soggy roses.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

In a vase on Monday - colour

The intense colours in my vase this week come from nasturtiums, sweetpeas and a single glorious zinnia! Their beauty and love of life speak for themselves and need no further words from me! Enjoy!
8 comments
Read more

Coastal walk from Gullane to North Berwick

By the time I have walked about four miles, my toes are screaming at me - it's the arthritis, you see.  One of the joys of being that little bit older than I was.  However, for a long time, I have been keen to walk along the beaches, and follow the coastal path, between Gullane and North Berwick. So, having worked out the tide times, I decided today was the day, and off we went. Below is our starting point, the bay at Gullane.  It's a lovely beach, very popular with dog walkers. This is looking east, the direction Tilly and I were going to take. Looking back, up the Forth, the unmistakable bulk of Arthur's Seat, and Edinburgh's skyline, just clear enough to see. For most of the walk, there is the choice between wandering along a series of beaches, or following a path along the top of each. There's no denying it, at heart I am a shell-seeker.  I have loads of shells at home.  We lived on one of the out islands in the Bahamas for a just over a year, a lo
7 comments
Read more

Possibly the last post and a sizzlingly hot vase on Monday

The border in our tiny garden is in an in-between phase at the moment and not very colourful, but elsewhere there are pops of high summer colour and I have brought them together in my vase today. The running wave uses Blogger as it's vehicle and they are changing the way a post is created but unfortunately I cannot make the new format work. I can't progress beyond the title! I cannot navigate to the main body of the post to create text. The new template has no prompts for adding photos, weblinks, to format the text, change font etc. It may be my old MacBook that's as fault but I can't do anything about that!! Are any other IAVOM bloggers who use Blogger having the same problems? I have tried, three times, to contact Blogger through their 'Help' prompt and received no feedback or contact whatsoever. This post is using the old 'Legacy' format, which no longer permits any kind of formatting of text, and so after four attempts I have finally manage
15 comments
Read more