Scents Of Summer

Now that the weather had turned sunny and warm again, the teddy bears were out playing in the garden. Their friends had come round to visit and were looking at the flowers blooming everywhere - a sure sign of Summer.

"These roses smell very nice!" said Gerry as he breathed in the perfume of a lovely peach-coloured rose. "What a shame these lovely scents don't last all year," he continued sadly.

"Well, actually," Bubbles advised him, "I do know a way of making them last!"

"Gosh! That sounds very clever. How do you do that?" asked Gerry.

"We can make something called potpourri," Bubbles told him. "People have been doing it for hundreds of years, so it's nothing new really. It means we can have the scents of Summer in the house all year long."

"Can we make some now?" asked Gerry.

"Well, it takes a little time to actually create, but we could make a start if you like?" Bubbles answered.

"Ooh! Yes, please!" replied Gerry. "Shall I ask if anyone else wants to help?"

"Yes, the more the merrier," agreed Bubbles. So Gerry ran off to ask the others if they would like to help make this new thing called potpourri. Alfred, Lizzie and Crackers agreed to join in, so they ran over to where Bubbles was waiting for them.

"Just let me explain what potpourri is," said Bubbles, "and then we can start to make our own."

"It's a medley of different dried flowers with spices and herbs added - in fact, anything that smells nice. Certain flowers are better than others. We'll put whatever we pick onto newspaper or big trays in a warm, dark, dry place and leave them there for a week or so to dry out. You can dry them out more quickly in a warm oven but as we are not allowed to touch the oven, we will let them dry naturally," Bubbles explained.

"What sort of flowers are best?" asked Alfred.

"Roses especially," replied Bubbles, "and we'll see if we can find maybe pansies, scented geraniums, violets, marigolds, dianthus, verbena or chrysanthemums. We can also use herbs like rosemary, peppermint, lemon verbena and thyme.

We'll add some spices like cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, star anise, and maybe bay leaves after the flowers and herbs have dried. We still have some dried lemon peel from Christmas, and we collected some small pine cones on one of our walks a while ago. If we can find those, we can add them in at the end too."

"That's lots of things we can look for," said Crackers. "We can probably find quite a few flowers in our garden and I think there will be lots of herbs in the herb trough. Let's start searching!"

The bears all ran off around the garden to find the types of things that Bubbles had listed. Alfred found some peppermint growing in the herb trough, and it actually had flowers as well as leaves so he cut off a few of each. Lizzie found some brightly-coloured verbena and asked Bubbles if it would keep its colour when it was dried. Bubbles wasn't too sure, but said that they should try it anyway and find out.

Gerry was still over by the peach-coloured roses. He liked their scent the best so he carefully plucked some petals from the flowers, after asking Bubbles if it was OK for him to do so. Bubbles had told him that they could pick any of the flowers and herbs in the garden as long as they didn't take everything!

Crackers found some bright orange marigolds and cut some flowers off the biggest plant. Lizzie found some other roses, a paler colour, but very scented.

Bubbles had found them a basket and they placed all their pickings carefully into it. "Now all we have to do is lay these out on the paper and trays and let them dry out thoroughly," Bubbles told them.

"We may also have to pay a visit to our local craft shop to buy something called 'orris root' which is called a 'fixative' because it absorbs and retains the scented essences so our potpourri will last longer. But we can also add some drops of essential oils later - maybe after about three months - to refresh the scents again. And we can keep doing that with different oils so the scent changes each time."

It took a while to lay out all the different petals the bears had found. Some of the smaller flowers, and one or two of the rosebuds they had picked they left whole to make a nicer display. Now all they had to do was wait…..

Maybe you could gather some flowers and herbs the same as the bears have done. Don't forget to ask before you pick any flowers from the garden. And look out for a future story where we'll explain how to turn them into lovely scented potpourri.