A Monday Bouquet

This is the time of year when I always have a wildflower bouquet on my table. This makes me very, very happy. 

I mean, I always think it would be nice to have what is quaintly called a "cutting garden," specifically to have cut flowers for the house. But, you know, that would require work to maintain such a garden. I find growing our vegetables to be enough work.

For that reason, I'm quite happy to yank off some flowering weeds on my morning walk with the dogs and put them in an old milk bottle on the table. 

Like so.

This also provides an opportunity for plant identification. For example, I just learned on our way to church yesterday that the tall stalks with the tiny yellow flowers are sweet clover. A. was considering gathering some of the seeds and scattering them in our fields for the sheep.

The smaller purple flowers are alfalfa, which A. actually seeded a couple of years ago and which pop up here and there. 

The little white flowers are a wretched weed called bindweed. I spend a lot of time yanking that out of my rhubarb bed. I pulled the stalk of grass one of the flowering ones had climbed so I could put it in my bouquet. Might as well get some use out of that awful stuff.

And I just now learned that the larger purple flowers with the yellow centers are silver nightshade. Those require a bit of cunning to gather without scissors, because the stems are covered in small thorns. I used a sunflower leaf to grab them and pull. Because I do not have scissors with me on my morning walks.

The roadside sunflowers aren't blooming yet, but you can bet they'll be in my table bouquet when they do.