Saturday 21 March 2015

Birthday goodies

It was my Birthday last Wednesday (18th), and I received several lovely garden-themed presents. I'd like to show them to you.

This is probably the star of the show - Jane got me this dehydrator:


It will be perfect for drying chillis and tomatoes later in the year!

Acting on inside information, my MIL got me this book:


You all know that I am keen on foraging, so this book is perfect for me. I expect it will allow me to broaden my range of foraged harvests, because it has lots of good photos which will be a great help in identifying edible plants.


As well as providing information about plants, fungi, nuts etc which are suitable for foraging, the book contains lots of recipes, so my culinary repertoire is likely to expand too.


My daughter Emma bought me a Honeyberry plant, which I have planted over by the fence, in front of the Raspberries:


The Honeyberry's Latin name is Lonicera Caerulea, which tells you straight away that it is related to the well-known flowering shrub Honeysuckle (Lonicera Pericylmenum). My plant is just beginning to produce leaves and their resemblance to Honeysuckle leaves is very obvious.


I can't help thinking that Emma's choice of gift may have had an ulterior motive - her daughters Lara and Holly love picking fruit in my garden when they visit, so I'm sure they will soon be eyeing-up this plant as a likely source of edible goodies!

My other daughter, Fiona, tells me that she will be giving me my Birthday present next month when we visit her in France. She says the present may be in liquid form and encased in glass. I wonder what that could be???

10 comments:

  1. I have three Roger Phillips books - they are beautifully illustrated. Honeyberry flowers look like honeysuckle too.

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  2. Lovely presents, Mark. The book looks most interesting. Honeyberry is new to me...googling now.

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  3. Happy birthday! And what great gifts.

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  4. Happy belated birthday. Wonderful gifts, I think your family know you very well.

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  5. Well, happy birthday to you, Mark! I've wanted to get a dehydrator for a long time & am hoping that this will be the year as well. I'm not sure if my husband is as good at picking up on those clues as your wife, however.

    And now, how about the strangest coincidence. I just finished a post about my fruit tree & berry purchases and one of them was a Haskap aka honeyberry. I'd never even heard of this particular plant & had not seen it mentioned by others until I started to so some research on edible berries - and then we both do a post about it on the same day. I mean, really - what are the chances of that?

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  6. Happy birthday, the book looks really interesting, it find it's way onto my books to get list :)

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  7. I'll be really interested to see how you get on with the dehydrator, it seems a really good way of preserving the surplus.

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  8. What a fabulous plethora of pressies Mark... Happy belated birthday to you ;D

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  9. Did you hear what they said about Honeyberry plants on GQT on Radio 4 last Friday?

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