A Little Blue From the Garden

Sometimes the harvest isn’t big.

Sometimes it doesn’t fill a basket or cover the kitchen counter.

Sometimes it fits right in the palm of your hand.

And somehow, it’s still enough to make you stop and smile.

Today, we harvested a little butterfly pea from the garden, and y’all… look at that blue.

There are some things growing around 1737 that I love because they’re useful. Some because they’re delicious. Some because Jordan planted them somewhere and I didn’t even realize we had them until I walked past one day. 😂

But butterfly pea?

I love it because it’s just beautiful.

Those deep blue flowers almost don’t look real. And while they’re gorgeous growing in the garden, they’re more than just something pretty to look at.

Butterfly pea flowers can be dried and steeped into a naturally brilliant blue herbal tea. And here’s the part that still feels a little like garden magic: add something acidic, like lemon, and that beautiful blue begins shifting toward purple and pink.

Now y’all know I love anything the garden does that feels like it’s showing off a little bit.

And apparently butterfly pea understood the assignment.

Our little harvest today isn’t huge. We’ll dry these flowers and continue collecting them as the plant gives them to us. Eventually, they’ll make their way into our cups.

But standing there looking at those few blue flowers reminded me of something.

We’ve gotten so accustomed to talking about abundance in terms of how much we harvest.

How many tomatoes.

How many eggs.

How many pounds of vegetables.

How full the basket is.

But abundance doesn’t always arrive by the basketful.

Sometimes abundance is a handful of brilliant blue flowers that grew because somebody put a seed in the dirt, cared for it, waited… and let the garden do what gardens do.

And today?

That was more than enough for me.

Just a little blue from the garden.

And goodness, it was beautiful.

Cultivating community. Harvesting home.

— The Front Porch at 1737 Urban Homestead