Flowers in the Garden

I have to admit that I don't grow a lot of ornamental flowers.  Since I still work full-time, I don't have a lot of time left over to spend on the essential chores of weeding, mulching, watering and so forth that any kind of garden needs.   So, when rationing my time, I tend to choose working in my herb garden over working in my flower beds.

However, this does not keep me from enjoying flowers.  There are plenty of them in my herb garden.  Here are some of the beautiful flowers I have enjoyed this year.  

Cilantro

This is what my cilantro looked like when it bloomed this spring.  Cilantro does not tolerate hot weather very well and will flower and make seeds as soon as it detects hot weather is coming.    The seeds of cilantro are known as "coriander" which has a completely different taste.

Fennel

This is a picture of my fennel that is blooming.  This picture was taken several weeks ago.   If you look closely in this picture, you can see several black-swallowtail butterfly caterpillars munching away on the foliage.   They didn't seem to hurt the plant at all and they have all disappeared now.  I assume they have all morphed into butterflies by now and have flown away.

Purple Basil

These are purple basil plants.  They are beautiful plants with their purple foliage and pinkish-white flowers that grow on spikes above the leaves.  You can eat this basil and it tastes much like regular Italian basil.  It tastes a little sweeter to me.  This is one of my favorite plants.

Tansy

These are tansy flowers.  I wrote about tansy a few weeks ago:  http://windyacresnaturalfarm.blogspot.com/2011/06/tansy.html

Chaste Tree

These are the flowers of one of my chaste trees.  These are more like large shrubs than real trees.  I also wrote about my chaste trees in a blog entry from 2010:  http://windyacresnaturalfarm.blogspot.com/2010/09/chaste-tree.html