For the past couple of weeks, my town and the surrounding area have been glowing with the bold yellow of the forsythia bush. As a lifelong New Englander, I grew up with forsythia as one of the first real signs of spring but it wasn’t until last spring that I realized that its flowers could be eaten. I’ve been on a mission to eat them every since.
Eating a wild plant is always a safety game – you want to choose one that is removed from any major roadways, that has not been sprayed with chemicals, and that is not in a polluted area where industrial waste or other byproducts may have seeped into the soil. I was able to source a couple of safe plants (my parent’s yard but they live far away, and two friends who live marginally closer) and it has just been a waiting game until they came into bloom again.
Little did I know that Forsythia had some lessons in store for me.
As I sat out to wait for forsythia to bloom once more, I decided to do some base research on their magical properties. None of my standard witch books mentioned forsythia – not even the famed green encyclopedia (you know the one). I finally stumbled upon Witch of the Wood’s post on the folk magic of forsythia on Patheos which at least gave me a direction in which to go in.
There forsythia is listed as associated with the number four (which makes sense to me as it has four petals) and my mind was off to the races. Four is a number of form and structure – something built out of four parts is built to last. The flower’s yellow color indicates grandness, happiness, and achievement. It is about building your life one metaphorical brick at a time. It’s about having a solid foundation – four is a number that makes things real.
I decided that I was going to make a forsythia jelly. I made a dandelion jelly around May Day last year that we all devoured and I was eager to see how it might compare to forsythia.
It was such a good idea.
The thing is – I’ve made a lot of jams and jellies over my lifetime – mostly made out of berries and rosehips. That’s easysauce but I didn’t know that it was easysauce because I’d never tried to set something that didn’t have any pectin in it.
The first time, the intent was totally there. The four of us wandered out to Dora’s forsythia bush at dusk on a cool evening. It was Good Friday – we had cod baking inside. ` It was a good day to pick some flowers. A good day to be outside with friends just covered in flower petals. (That’s my favorite thing in existence, being covered in flower petals)
The next day, I was distracted by Gray and my partner wanting to play board games and didn’t check to see that my jelly was set. It’s okay, we have a bunch of really nice forsythia syrup that just can’t be used for cocktails because it turns into the consistency of boba tea when you add it to alcohol. That’s unfortunate but we’ve been finding other uses for it.
But I was determined but I decided to go to my other friend’s house to pick more forsythia and try again. We went up that Monday night but up where they live in the hills, the temperate dropped as soon as the sun went behind the mountain. It was cold – not at all the right headspace to pick flowers. My partner and I stayed for as long as we could to pick enough flowers but it was a minimally pleasant experience.
The next day, I was super careful. I read the package and followed their directions exactly even though they seemed to contradict the one successful flower jelly that I’d made in the past. And the jelly wouldn’t set.
At that point, I was frustrated.
I knew that I’d done it wrong by being inattentive the first time but I had followed the fucking directions to the letter the second time. (I shouldn’t have and I knew it but sometimes you have to make a decision just to do something and I’d chosen the wrong option)
I should have just followed my recipe for dandelion jelly because it had worked.
That following Sunday, we went back up to the farm to pick dandelions for the third time. It was the kind of day where you need three types of layers of clothing every 10 minutes as the sun drifted in and out of the cloud cover. We got yelled at by the very pregnant Nubian goats because we weren’t going over to see them. My partner and I set out to pick a third time and without being asked, my friend started picking right along with us. The three of us picked while we talked to my two other friends, got yelled at by some crows, the sun was shining, and it was perfect.
For the first time, I could smell the subtle scent of the flowers as they picked them. On the first two occasions, it had taken force to remove the petals but as the sunlight warmed the bush, it seemed to release them into my hand at the slightest touch. I slowly worked my way down the bush and away from my friends but when I looked back, new blossoms had opened to replace those that I had removed.
I could have given up for forsythia. Seven pints of syrup that cannot be used in cocktails is a lot. But rather than bowing to my failure, I decided that I needed to do it one more time. If only for science.
My kitchen notebook has almost as many failures as successes. We write it down both to keep from repeating mistakes and to learn from them.
I knew before I had even made the tea that this time, I was going to make jelly. I could feel the flowers inside of the jar. We understood each other.
My house is a number 4. My partner and I are both 8’s and we like the structure that 4 energy provides us with. You need four sides to make a pyramid. You need to lay every brick to stand the test of time. You can’t give up just because you half-assed it and expect to get what you want out of life.
You need to work for it.
You’d think that as a double Taurus I’d be better at remembering that.