Today I started cutting the lavender in the backyard. I have five or six "spots" where lavender has either been panted or has spread itself, and it's a bumper crop this year. I cut it back to the tops of the leaves, to keep it from getting too leggy, when the buds are just opening, and I spread it on cookie sheets all over the dining room table to dry.
Once dry, the flowers are crumbled by hand off the stems and put in mason jars for use in baking or drawer sachets. Did you know that if your lavender sachet has stopped smelling, all you have to do is crush it around a little with your fingers, and the scent will be revived? They can last for years, if kept dry.
I like to add crushed flowers to sugar cookies, a very Victorian kind of flavour, but my husband thinks they taste like soap. That's fine -- all the more for me!
Be sure to leave a lot of the flowers for the bees. I've seen very few bees this year, mostly bumblebees, but hopefully as the lavender blooms, it will attract more to the garden. I planted three whole beds of various flowers, but very little germinated (weird cold spring followed by blistering heat followed by torrential rain followed by cool temps again), and so far all I've gotten is one very tiny pink zinnia. A for effort, little flower.
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