Nature's early or I am just slow...

[Emdiesse]

so earlier this month I thought i'd pick some elder flowers to give a go at making cordial. I heard that it was best to pick after their hadn't been rain for a while (first mistake, when hasn't it rained!). Secondly I never found the time to really get out there and do it.

So next I looked at the wild cherry tree outside the back of my house and thought... i'll be ready for you! I understood august was the time when the cherries ripened. I got home from a week away at my girlfriends t'other day and the cherry tree is bare, in fact, all over. I feel I am starting to be able to recognise wild cherry trees out and about and they are all bare too!

So is nature a month in front, or am I just way too slow. The birds have 'ad 'em all!

Heck, another thing I wanted to have a go at was making some nettle cordage. Waiting for the purple ones! I'll probably even manage to miss them! I'll have to get out there next week for that at least. It's a must!

:vio:

 

[dwardo]

The cherries have been very early up here and pretty rubbish in both taste and volume. Cant blame them after that winter

 

[Harvestman]

If you want to have a go at cordial, try using meadowsweet blossom. It comes out a bit later than elderflower, and has a more earthy flavour, but I've just made a big batch of cordial and a batch of syrup just by soaking the flowers in water for about 36 hours, and then adding lemon juice and sugar to the liquid after the flowers were strained out. Really nice, and a little bit different. You can add cinnamon sticks to the liqid if you want too.

 

[Emdiesse]

Brill. Cheers for the replies guys! Glad I am not too slow and it is nature playing hard to get.
I will look out for meadowsweet at least. I have just had a look in a couple of my flower books and the collins one says it is related to dropwort and looks similar, any way of telling the two apart.
Also, anything else similar to meadowsweet and dropwort that might easily be confused but is poisonous or causes any other ill effect and so on?

I'll have a search for it this year at least

 

[Harvestman]

Meadowsweet (Filipendula ulmaria) is not remotely related to any of the water dropworts. It does grow in a similar habitat, although it is much less choosy. It is very very common, and abundant, and isn't at all difficult to identify.

Some links to start you off.

http://www.wildfoodlarder.com/2009/07/02/meadow-sweet-a-scent-of-summer/ Note that the flowers are not in flat-topped umbels like the water dropworts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filipendula_ulmaria
http://www.sciencephoto.com/images/download_lo_res.html?id=666400157

Usual rules though. If you can't idfentify it with 100% certainty, don't eat it or make anything you intend to consume from it.

Incidentally, if you want a decent flower identification book, this is a little old, but still reliable and hard to beat at the price.

 

[Harvestman]

By the way, in South Wales at least, the meadowsweet is out now, in abundance.