SINCE the Middle Ages, brewers have flavored beer by adding the fragrant flowers of the hop vine (Humulus lupulus) to a boiling barley mash.

There are too many treasures to relate here: Fuji apple trees espaliered against the kitchen garden fence; golden hop vine weaving through the autumn clematis, which is a cloud of tiny white flowers.

This would change once spring arrived, when the vast acreage of hop vines would be pruned then fertilized.

(Just try staying awake in the shade of a large, blooming hop vine!)

Patience, Patience Q. I purchased two hop vines three springs ago.

The muzzle flash lights up the hop vines like a strobe light.

These meadows were covered with hop vines, leading the early settlers to coin the town, "Hop Bottom."

The flower of the hop vine is used as a flavouring and preservative agent in nearly all beer made today.

The settlement was first called "the Hopp Ground" because of the wild hop vines that grew there.

The hop vine crop, which was almost ready for harvest, could be severely damaged if the hop vines were knocked to the ground.