I harvested a nice handful of flowering Hairy Bittercress today, from a fairly high plant put on a neighbouring street. It smells great and as ever reminds me of growing cress on cotton well as a child. I look forward to adding it to the apprentices pumpkin soup tomorrow morning before the meeting.

Tomorrow well take a look at this plant – Yarrow. Very useful and quite tasty in moderation.

I took my daughter for a beautiful walk in the park this morning. The sun was perfect, the ground was hard and crunchy from the first proper frost of this winter. The Beech leaves still cling on to the trees and bushes but are brittle and crackle in the wind. Out us good to see that the plants which should be gone by now are now under proper pressure – finally Comfrey melts into the ground and we can see what should be around.

The Willows of Park Frankendael have been coppiced and the withies laid down to full gaps near the lake. I took home a bunch of them and made them into a drying rack for herbs, our vegetables. It reminded me of weaving my garden fence in Somerset years ago and it felt good.