A few summers ago, four women came to Global Village to take my class.
They were in their thirties, long time friends celebrating the birthday of one of the girls. They asked good questions. They were funny. They got into the work in the way that people get into work when they're actively choosing to enjoy themselves, which is rarer than you'd think. We had a great class.
We made spring rolls wrapped with violets and nasturtiums. We baked focaccia studded with calendula and herbs. We made a floral cordial that we drank, cold, on the patio, in the kind of late-summer light that makes you remember that being alive is, on balance, a pretty good deal.
At the end of the day, as they were packing up to leave, one of them said, "Corrie, this was wonderful. We loved every minute of it."
I said thank you.
She said, "Just one tiny thing — we'd actually meant to book the What Plants Know class."
I stared at her.
For three hours I had been teaching the wrong class. They had spent the entire morning learning how to cook with edible flowers, when what they had wanted to do was learn the history of medicinal herbs.
And nobody had said a word.
"We were just having too good of a time," she said. "And we will come back to do the other class next year!"
I have thought about that day a lot. I think about it because it taught me something about my own work that I would not have learned any other way: the content of the class is not actually the thing. The experience of the class is the thing. Four women came expecting to learn about medicinal plants. They got something completely different. But they had a wonderful day anyway, because the day itself — the garden, the kitchen, the cordial, the company of friends doing something together that none of them had done before — was the actual product. The plants were just the excuse.
Which is, I think, the secret of every good class.
Who comes to the Edible Flower Garden class
It is, by some distance, my most popular offering. I have run it for birthday parties, married couples, for elderly ladies looking for something to do on a Sunday, for mother-and-daughter pairs, for women who'd never made anything from scratch in their lives, and women who could have taught the class themselves but came along anyway because their friend wanted to.
What we actually do
I'll spare you the detailed itinerary. The garden tour, the harvest, the kitchen, the long table on the patio — those are the bones. The flesh of it depends on what's blooming, what the weather is doing, who's in the group, and how loose people are by the time we get to the cordial.
What I will tell you is that you will eat flowers you didn't know were food. You will look at a calendula petal differently for the rest of your life. You will leave with a small sense that the world is slightly more edible than you thought it was, which I consider — speaking as someone who spent thirty years not noticing — a meaningful upgrade.
You will probably also leave with a story. Something funny that happened. Something one of your friends said. The way the cordial tasted. The face your friend makes when she tastes nasturtiums.
Those stories are why people book the class. They just don't know it yet.
The practical bits
The Edible Flower Garden class runs $68 per person. Three to four hours, depending on the group. Limited to small numbers because we cook and eat together at one table. Spring through early fall, depending on what's blooming.
The class is unrelated, despite my history of accidents, to any other class on the calendar. If you actually want medicinal herbs, you'll want a different class. I will check, at the start of the day, that you've signed up for the one you meant to.