"Tuesday's Treasures"- Blasts from the past!!!

Hello and Welcome to Tuesday's Treasures.

I have a couple of Treasures to share today. The first is a cutting from a magazine.

My Mum gave this to me a few years back. Can you guess what is behind the cutting? I will tell you soon.

One of my other Treasure's is the common  Nasturtium. Now these come up each year in the garden. It wasn't until I was having a conversation with someone who had visited a friends garden and she was proudly shown the Nasturtiums growing out the front yard. The lady was so pleased to have them in her garden. It made me realise we take a lot of plants for granted.

So I went looking for information about it and found that Monet, the great French Impressionist used these old fashioned plants along the central alley of his famous garden at Giverny.

The spur of the flower is full of nectar and the bees love this. Children have been known to sip on the nectar as well. I have used the leaves in hamburgers instead of lettuce. The flowers can be thrown into a salad or used as decoration on a plate of sandwiches. The seeds can be pickled in vinegar and used like capers .

So next time you see some Nasturtiums growing in a garden remember that this plant has been around since the 1500's.

Sally  wanted some information about the Sweet Pea  (Lathyrus odoratus) so I will include it in this post.
Sweet Peas are native in the Mediterranean, growing wild in Crete, southern Italy and Sicily since ancient times. The first seeds were to England by Father Cupani a Sicilian Monk. Seeds were first released commercially way back in 1724. Sweet Peas are self fertile and apart from mutations come true from seed. Often the smaller shrivelled looking seeds are the darker colours so don't  discard them because they are smaller. They will grow into beautiful plants. It wasn't until growers realised that they didn't cross pollinate they took steps to ensure cross pollination and improvements in the plant  were possible. Around 1877 Mr Henry Eckford began crossing and selecting Sweet Peas leading to a strain with much larger flowers which became known as Glandiflora Sweet Peas. "Prima Donna" was one of the Glandifloras bred by Mr Eckford and from this a new sport was named which eventually became known as "Countess Spencer" which the famous English "Spencer" peas originate from.
The oldest developed Sweet Pea still in existence is the intensely fragrant,red and white, eighteenth century Sweet Pea called "Painted Lady" The Australian two-toned pink heirloom variety "Bushby" was bred from "Painted Lady".  I hope you enjoyed reading about the Nasturtium and Sweet Pea.

Oh yes, you are probably wondering about that magazine cutting. The page behind has my birth weight and my weight for the next couple of months. I weighed 7 pounds and 4 ounces when I was born.

Visit Melody to see who is joining in Tuesday's Treasures this week.

Happy days.
Bev C