Today's favourite is........

Sometimes it's a struggle to find things to write about so I thought a good plan might be a series of weekly posts about my favourite......

And then I thought, my favourite what?

And then I pulled myself together and thought as it's my blog it can be my favourite whatever I like!! So I will try to stick to garden and food related stuff but just sometimes I might go just a tad off piste and I hope you'll forgive me for that.

Frothy Cow Parsley

But this week's favourite is most definitely of the horticultural type, although of course some folk would call the plant I am loving right now a weed rather than something they might want in their garden! But I love it because it is the start of the flowering of the umbellifers, those white, floaty beauties that we all know hold a few nasties within their family, but that mainly just make wafty white billowing clouds of loveliness along the roadsides and in fields across the countryside. I am of course talking about cow parsley, which will soon here at least, be followed by wild carrot, wild angelica and sweet cicely. In the gardens soon we'll see Anthriscus sylvestris cultivars appearing soon along with Astrantias, Orlayas and fennel, dill and my absolute favourite Angelica archangelic, which here in one of our Incredible Edible Bristol beds is already in full bloom, wowing people walking past and feeding the bees which are busy buzzing around looking for that early nectar.

So I guess my favourite thing this week is the Apiaceae family, with it's more than 300 genera and more than 2,500 species.

Angelica archangelica

Astrantia.