Right where our little lane joins the main road is a large caper bush. It grows out the dry-stone wall, near a cascading rosemary bush, and for most of the year is nothing more than a little brown stub among the rocks. Then, when the heat comes, in just a few weeks, it explodes in long spiny branches covered with glossy green round leaves, on which beautiful flowers grow.
With four large white petals and lots of long purple stamens, caper blossoms are the most amazing flowers, especially since they grow out of vertical rock, with no apparent soil at all.
The capers we eat are the buds of these blossoms, picked before they flower. When we came back from our travels, I was afraid that I might have missed the right moment for picking them, but although I didn't gather as many as last year (here), I did get enough to make one jar of salt-preserved capers. We'll be glad to have it in the months to come.
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Thank you Renee for hosting "Friday's Flowers": Pick some flowers, arrange 'em pretty, take a photo, post it to your blog, visit Friday's Flowers to share it with us.
