Pretty in Pink

Our local school has some lovely raised beds which have been left untouched for quite some time.  To be honest, every time I walked past them to collect little Sweetpea I had to fight the urge to go and weed them.  So , rather than be annoyed by this I decided to take action, after chatting to the teachers I was given the go ahead to do a little make over.  Little Sweetpea, Middle Sweetpea and I dived into two of the raised beds, weeded them and planted them up with things like Cosmos, Sunflowers, Beetroot, Onions, Marigolds, Tomatoes etc.  

Here is a before shot for you, although the poppies looked lovely, it was nice to revert the beds to what they were made for.

This is after an hour or so of work, all planted up. I am hoping that the school keep watering everything after all our hard work.  I have had to remind them a couple of times already but we will have to wait and see.

Anyway, I digress from the original title and photo of this blog post, sorry about that.  I have never been one to keep exactly on track in conversation, I tend to spark off along different paths , but hey, that makes chatting all the more fun.

Whilst eyeing up the veggie patches and wanting to weed them, I noticed a nice large patch of chives in full flower.  Well this reminded me of a lovely photo I saw on Pinterest of some chive flowers that had been popped in distilled white vinegar.  I just HAD to give it ago ..... surely they couldn't turn the vinegar that pink???

So I got picking (with the school's permission of course :-) ).  I filled the jar with chive flowers after checking them all over for bugs etc, then poured in some distilled white vinegar.  Liteally in one day I could see it turning pink, a lovely shade of bright megenta pink!    It looks stunning, so so pretty.  You then need to remove the flowers after roughly 7 days and you are left with a lovely pink, onion tasting vinegar which can be used for salad dressings etc.  I think it needs to be kept is a shady area to keep the colour.  

Wow , isn't nature just wonderful !