Elderflowers!

One more post today - it was a beautifully sunny day today and we finally found some elderflowers that can hopefully make some decent elderflower cordial. We were wondering if we'd every find a reasonable quantity of elder trees or if the ones we did find were ever going to come into flower. This morning we had a lovely walk in Hanchurch Woods, just outside Newcastle-under-Lyme, and saw some elders with resolutely closed buds. No chance of finding anything we could use there.

However, as we travelled home along some quiet country roads we stumbled across a particularly good elder with what looked like plenty of blossom. As luck would have it there was a nice wide passing place (with room for someone else if they needed it) to stop the car in, while I dashed out, scaled the slightly steep bank (braving some belligerent stinging nettles), and quickly snapped off 25 or 30 good heads of flowers to take home. There they are in the picture at the start of this post.

We'll look for some more as we're out and about on sunny days. You can never make too much elderflower cordial - and it's always good to find places where you might find elderberries for later in the year. They make a great chutney and a wonderful clove-scented cordial for Christmas time...

We follow a recipe for elderflower cordial copied out of a National Trust book we got out of the library in Cambridge - elderflowers, boiling water, sugar, citrus fruits and citric acid, steeped in a bucket - a brewing bucket cleaned up from yesterday! - and then to be bottled for all sorts of nice things. I'm looking forward to Devonshire Lemonade - gin, elderflower cordial and fizzy water... We're permanently crossing fingers that all these treats will turn out all right at the moment!