I really need to catch up on the beautiful photos which the challengers have sent me this week! Tomorrow, I’ll work through them all and add more to a post. It’s been a bit of a roller coaster week but now I’m back in Amsterdam and can happily reflect on good times spent with my family.

Chepstow has a VERY old castle (1067, so my Dad tells me) and around it grow a lot of beautiful plants. Stinging nettles and wild garlic are the two edible show stoppers around the castle and dell, but there are dozens of other tasty plants. Alkanet and Veronica are growing amongst the cow parsley here.

Walking through the town, I found Lime trees with leaves almost begging to be nibbled, brambles offering fresh new growth and this perky patch of Pellitory of the wall. I’m always very pleased to find this herb. It does like the protection of walls and it can offer a lot of benefits as well as taste. Best known to me is its talent for nourishing the urinary system. I stumble into Pellitory in the older parts of Amsterdam but Park Frankendael is home to a massive colonie of its cousin,  Pensylvania pellitory. I’ve found it to be very useful too but it has an infortunate reputation in some areas due to its synchronised emissions of pollen. Pensylvania pellitory looks very similar to its cousin but lacks any redness and had an air of glassiness (and it’s conveniently called Glaskruid in Dutch).