Florals? For Spring? Groundbreaking

Online life is as full of spring as our fields. So many celebratory images of hawthorn coming into bud, gorse busting out all over, primroses shouting their wee heads off, cuckoo flowers rampaging across meadows, bluebells sprinkling their glory and dog violets poking out from the bottom of hedgerows. It’s a feast for the senses and a calming reassurance that LIFE GOES ON, whatever shitey bollocks is in the news. Which for good or ill I’ve stopped watching/listening to.

I focus on what’s beneath my feet, before my eyes, at hand’s grasp, and what’s scenting the air. Although the latter can be rather too grounding as Andrew is currently pressure washing the cow sheds, now that the herd is out at grass (hoorah!) and the sheds have to be prepared for calving. Just a brief spell back inside for the heavily pregnant gals (days, not weeks) who, all being well, will be back outside grazing with new babes at foot as quick as they like. To be honest, I don’t mind the smell of the cow muck at all. It’s not offensive, unlike the muck from intensively raised indoor chickens which is truly pungent and pretty vile.

We ran our popular Introduction to Smallholding course this past weekend, and after thousands of participants we can pretty much anticipate the questions, however deliciously off the wall they might be. But I had a first, which is always fun. People regularly ask what we do with the muck, the farmyard manure, because they imagine it is a problem, and haven’t yet gauged that it’s a huge asset that returns nutrients and life back into the soil. Black gold we call it. But there was a twist on this theme. One chap asked if the smell caused a problem for us, so we all went to sniff the muck heap, right up close, nostrils flaring inches from that lush organic matter. Sniff sniff sniff they went. Did anyone less accustomed to muck find it smelly or unpleasant? Nope, not a one. Nothing like being able to give people in your face reassurance as well as advice.

Reaching back round to the title of this particular rambling, the emerging spring flowers are indeed gorgeous, but I’m still with Miranda Priestly on her dismissal of florals, just not where nature or clothes are concerned. I’m talking floral-flavoured foods; they should stay put with Parma violets and elderflower champagne and cordials and not venture further. I have a deep-seated dislike of lilac or lavender flavoured food – cakes, syrups, biscuits, fudges or anything else sweet or savoury. Lilac is a glorious plant, and those really dark purple ones are a particular joy, although I’ll happily take mauve and white too. And lavender gives equal joy to a garden. But I don’t like either in soaps, face creams, body scrubs or perfumery, and their presence in edibles makes me gag. I must have a weird unaccommodating gene. Not that enthused with rose-infused munchables either, now I come to think of it. And if you’re thinking that geraniums or lilies get a free pass, you’d be wrong. Nasturtiums, with their peppery, non-floral flavour are welcome in the salad bowl. If it’s stuff for the face or body, give me citrus (give me THIS citrus, and this too) – I keep a pot on my desk and another by my bedside. It’s evocative of driving through Spain or Portugal, windows open, gasping at the glory of the lime groves, the lemon trees in everyone’s garden and the fields and fields of oranges. A different kind of farming from ours, often punctuated with pomegranate bushes and cork oaks.

So here’s to florals in their place. Abundantly displayed across our land, celebrated on frocks and shirts, but for the most part, absent from my plate.