purple time

Violets have just come and gone in our area. Most years they sort of catch me by surprise and before I have a chance to pick any, they've vanished. But just a couple of weeks ago Naia and I were waiting for Zach at his horse back riding lesson and happened upon a perfect little hillside of violets. We found a bag in the trunk of my car and started picking and picking.

Well Naia was half picking and half just running and rolling up and down the hill. Every once in a while she would look at me and say, "Is it spring now mama? Is winter gone? Are the flowers staying here now?" Yeah, it's been a loooooong winter.

So we had a huge bag of violets and now what? I tried sugaring a bunch of them, and it mostly kind of worked. Not like the kids cared what they looked or tasted like, it was a little wad of sugar, that's all that mattered and they were happy. In the end, I don't know that it was worth the effort.

Then we boiled the rest down into a simple syrup following the directions found here. We kept the purple sugar syrup in the fridge and we've been indulging in violet lemonade for the past several weeks. Now that was totally worth the effort. Easy peasey and the kids loved it!

Basically just some of the violet syrup, and some fresh squeezed lemons, and water.