With three children (who have been sick on and off in the past few weeks – what am I saying? months!), housekeeping, loads of home repairs in arrears and work, I haven’t had much time or energy to work on my garden. I still have loads of plants to pot (from the garden centre) and a variety of seeds to plant if I want to be able to eat from the garden at all this year.
Last year the snails got my fledgling beans, the mini maize never materialised and the edamame soy made a valiant effort and produced exactly 2 beans. Making for a meager meal. Ah well, we have a saying in Holland, ‘Alle begin is moeilijk’ or beginnings are always hard and I am sure I will get the hang of it.
In the mean time, I just wanted to share these images from the few flowers that did appear without any help, If you know what the orange beauties are, let me know because I lost the name tag a long time ago. The pink/purple ones are lilacs, of course. If I pick some tomorrow I’ll be able to make lilac sugar…
A gilded yarn 
Oh, Iris, they are my very, very favorite flower, the poppy!
Hi Zurn, I thought someone might suggest poppies and I agree they look like it, but I am pretty sure they are not. It is a low-leafed plant and the flowers are small, about 3 cm in diameter. They stand on stems up to 25 cm tall. There are also multiple flowers on a stem. Should have kept the label! They are pretty, though, aren’t they?
And how do you make lilac sugar? I have three lilac bushes.
Apparently you layer the flowers stripped from the stem with sugar in a pot. The recipes I found said to shake it from time to time and leave it from 3 days to 3 weeks. I have a miniature lilac tree so the tiny flowers are perfect, I think 🙂