Collecting Flowers for Tea

What nature gives I shall not waste...

Collecting flowers over the weekend, just before the wild Melbourne wind thrashes them around. I'm not planning to make more oil infusion for the near future so these will be dried for tea.

Super fragrant rose, Pope John Paul II. It's humongous as well. They are growing bigger every year.

I believe these are called Double Delight. They are not as fragrant but have pretty colours.

Lot of Calendula of course, they grow like weed in the garden, beneficial weed of course. They are also easy to control/weed out and if the flowers are collected early, then the seed spread can be minimised.

My trustee Lavender bushes that keep giving. The bees love them to bits and I have to trim them to keep the bees from scraping my son.

I gave the Calendula a bit of a wash in cold water before drying them lightly with tea towel and arranging them in drying tray.

I got to the roses before the bugs did so minimal washing went into this, only a bit of wipe with tea towels to shop away the odd bugs.

I also trimmed my Japanese Buxus and propagating more of them from the semi hard stems. I managed to get around a dozen new rooted cuttings last time, transplanted them, only to get the pulled out. They are positioned at the very front of the garden so I'm guessing it could be dogs. Anyways, I've propagated them successfully a few times so I'm sure I can do it again. But they take ages!!

Making Homemade Olive Oil Infusion from Organic Home Grown Flowers and Herbs

Infusing Olive oil with different herbs and flowers is simple but yet rewarding activity. The oil can be used for all sorts of things from cooking to natural homemade beauty treatment. I use them heavily for soap making and salve making (mixing them with melted beeswax).

The Rosemary bushes at the front garden have been thriving and needed a bit of a prune. I took this opportunity to take a few sprigs for propagation, drying for cooking and a few for the oil infusion.

Rosemary infusing in Olive oil.

Lavender is another beneficial floral infusion that I use for soap and salve. I gathered this from the front garden, but still leaving a large amount for the bees to indulge in.

Lavender flowers infusing in Olive oil.

There is no fresh roses at the moment in the garden, but I use dried rose petals that I kept from last spring and picked a few fresh Calendula flowers for this infusion. All parts of the Calendula flowers are used in this.

Dried Rose Petals and Calendula Flowers infusing in Olive oil.

Lastly, the Violet plants have been growing like weeds in the back garden. I found one way to control this is to keep picking the fresh flowers before they had the opportunity to seed. The leaves of this plant is also beneficial. I use this mainly for eczema salve and it works like a charm.

Violet Flowers and Leaves infusing in Olive oil.

This is a fun and simple activity with so much benefit. And remember to always try to grow your own plants without the use of chemical. This will minimise your chance of getting any allergic reaction from the infused oil application on your skin.

Not only beneficial, but looks pretty too.

The plants interstate move Part 1 - Roses

I brought along a few plants during my interstate move from Sydney to Melbourne.

They originally were planted in pots on my balcony apartment.

Now, they are occupying the ground, as how they should be.

At first, the plants were struggling. They looked like they were dying at one stage.

But thankfully, after a few weeks, they recovered.

The roses:

You can hardly see them, they lost all their leaves.

Three new members in the family, bought from my new neighbour on Gumtree:

The smallest size rose was planted in the backyard in a little pot, just outside the side sliding door where we put our outdoor table. It has been flowering vigorously, but lately was attacked by black spots.

The Pope John Paul and A Country Woman roses already flowered a few times and I managed to get the petals before being blown away by the wind.

They are now sitting nicely on our dining table.

The Pope John Paul rose is extremely fragrant, but the petals are smaller in size and the shape doesn’t hold very nicely. (They shrivelled)

So I mixed them up with the Country Woman red petals. The Country Woman rose petals are large and thick, with very deep red colour. It has a very beautiful presentation for dried rose petals.

This is a really beautiful rose that I think is going to grow really tall after being planted on the ground. Just a few weeks ago, new shoots came out from the ground, it’s very exciting. This rose is going to be very rigorous plant.

The red coloured stems are the new shoots. One of them is already taller then the older stems.

I’m still waiting for the Double Delight and Ebb Tide Roses to flower.

They have been growing taller, and have lots of leaves, but no sign of flower bud yet.

Ebb Tide is another fragrant variety that I love the most, and it’s purple.

It’s going to be amazing once this flower.

Please flower soon, please…