Elderflowers

We have been eagerly waiting for the elderflowers since about April. I promised Nathaniel that they would appear in late spring or early summer, but that assumed we got either of those seasons instead of the perpetual autumn that we seem to have been having. Then, as they appeared, it kept raining, and everyone knows that you collect elderflowers on a sunny day. So we waited and waited and when we prepared to go away for two weeks it became apparent that we were probably not going to get the harvest that we had hoped for. Finally, today it seemed okay to go picking and we were concerned that we wouldn't find any at all. But after a short walk (and bicycle - Nathaniel doesn't normally wear a helmet for harvesting!), we found some remaining on elderflower alley, though they were quite high up..... That evening we made a bottle of elderflower cordial and a vat of elderflower champaine and we now have 9 litres of the stuff maturing quitely under the stairs. And the left over elderflowers didn't go to waste either: