Farmer's Market Blooms

The Sweet Scent of Spring

Nearly summer - but we are still able to get beautifully fragrant sweet peas from the local farmer's market.  I buy them right up when I see them.  Sweet Pea's have a lovely lingering fragrance that pleasantly tickles the nose.  Snap dragons, sunflowers and baby's breath are other favorites.

Now a quick segue - a quick leap - to the world of edibles...

The above flowers, btw, are not edible.  (Only the seed of the sunflower is considered edible.) It is important to be absolutely certain that a flower or plant is edible before tasting it.

My interest in flowers, botanicals, herbs and such like does seem to marry up quite nicely with an interest in all things edible.  For instance, today I combed the local nursery for edible flowers to underplant and grow among the tomatoes, peppers and eggplant that make up my small potager this summer.  Nasturtiums are a favorite of mine because I like the way they artlessly mingle among other plants and I like their pleasant peppery flavor in summer salads.  Dianthus is another flower that is both colorful and edible.  Calendula too is simply brilliant.  I also like to harvest the flowering stalks of vegetables and herbs gone wild and weedy such as cilantro, chives, radish.  Yesterday I nibbled cilantro blossoms.  Tiny white flowers.  Quite tasty. Today I judiciously pruned the clump of cilantro, with an eye for it's beauty, and then chopped the clippings onto a chickpea curry at lunch.  It was such a simple thing to do, it only took a moment, and yet the cilantro improved my enjoyment of the dish immensely.