Not to despair, along with lilacs there is another fragrant spring flower that is absolutely worth having in the house: wisteria. I've never cut wisteria before and I do expect it to be as fleeting a cut flower as lilac. The latter only lasted a few days (but I still have the two possies and one vase with the tulips and ranunculus from Sunday). Nevertheless worth it of course for the lovely scent.
The majority of commercial cut flowers don't have any fragrance. They have been bred to look good for long. This is one reason to grow your own. Why have artificial fragrance in the house when you can have the real thing? Essential oils are probably the nearest you can get to real flowers, but those still require a complicated process in order to end up in the bottle that you buy. Some fragrance is however "uncapturable", like there is no sweet pea essential oil. So if you want sweet pea scent in your house, you need the real thing. Apparently you can capture the scent of wisteria by mixing dried wisteria with an oil like grapeseed, but this is different from an essential oil which uses a process of steam distillation or solvent extraction.
As it happens I have a wall of the real thing, so no need for me to use dried wisteria yet (although I may try that as well). I split the stems and put them in warm water which hopefully helps them staying fresh for longer.
I decided to combine it with another abundant flower at this time: Anthriscus sylvestris, or Queen Anne's lace, also known under the less flattering name of cow parsley. When you have a good look at it you can see why it is called after lace crafted by a queen even though it isn't clear which Queen Anne. I seared the stems in boiling water hoping that this will make them last a bit longer, or at least as long as the wisteria. I'll let you know next week!
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