Blooming

I do love vegetable flowers, and watching them unfold gives me more than an aesthetic satisfaction because the edible fruits are soon to follow.

We have potato flowers in varying shades from white to pink to lavender to blue, depending on the variety and corresponding with the color of the potato skin. As soon as these flowers begin to die back, I can begin to excavate some of the treasure trove beneath.
Pea flowers are short lived and delicate creatures. This time of year, the pods seem to grow by inches straight out of the newly opened blossoms.
Bean flowers remind me of orchids, perhaps the homely cousin, but beautiful still. And they continue to flower as young bean pods form, promising a reliable harvest, enough to put away for winter.

Pumpkin and squash flowers glow like lanterns in the bare spring garden, and not surprisingly, they never fail to attract interesting insects for nectar, prey or shelter.

Some flowers are a harvest in themselves, brightening and enlivening salads or garnishing meals. These Nasturtiums have a nearly addictive peppery tang.

And some vegetable flower are only ever seen in the seed saving garden. This globe of tiny onion flowers is wrapped in paper like the bulb below.
But for pure show, no vegetable flower can compete with the infinite variety of plants, bred and shared generation after generation, for the simple delight and surprising complexity of it's flower. Marigolds, Cosmos, Calendula and Hollyhocks have found gaps and corners in our vegetable garden, my selection based on their hardiness and ease of growing.

But nothing brings more insects to the garden than the homely flowers of dill, cilantro, caraway and carrot.