The last Elderflower in England

I recently took a train to the Cotswold's, that ancient place where the cottages are all cute and crumbly, and where strangers wave at you as they pass you in the lane. We were just entering one such cottage when my friend Muppet and her sister Eva started to lament their laziness at not picking elderflowers earlier, as the season was nearly spent.

I was a little confused. Days previously, I had collected bushels of elderflower (or so I thought) on the side of the road. The white heads were absolutely everywhere. The only reason why I hadn’t made my cordial yet was because I couldn’t find any citric acid. (I must mention at this point that I had never really seen elderflower before, but was going on a vague memory of something I'd seen on google image once.) I pointed out to Muppet, sheepishly.. that there was loads of elderflower in their driveway.

Berry Picking for jam

It turns out you can’t pick berries for ‘jam’ in the unpaid-for sense of the word at all. I was shocked to find that after one drives 33 miles, gets down on your knees and scratches around some bushes; you end up paying more for your dusty berries than you do at the supermarket, where they come conveniently packaged and wiped down.

By the way, these are NOT supermarket berries. They were handpicked, by yours truly. 

But mine was a beautiful day for berry-picking. The sun was out but not beating down exactly. And because I  ‘picked my own’ at Hildred's, there was a 100% guarantee of no miff berries in my punnet, no pale unripe contenders, and I got to taste before I selected. Bonus! (note- I found out later that you’re not really supposed to eat-as-you-go, oops.