One of my favourite things about Spring is the appearance of the white-headed Cow Parsley (Latin name Anthriscus Sylvestris), which looks especially beautiful growing in long sweeping drifts on roadside verges in the countryside where we live.
However, another place where it grows is in the graveyard of our thirteenth-century village church. The newer parts of the graveyard are kept neat and tidy, with the grass cut too often to give the Cow Parsley a chance to grow, but the older parts are left to nature. Or they are until the stinging nettles start taking over and then it is all cut down.
On a sunny morning, if you walk into the graveyard from the bottom end and head up the gentle slope towards the church, you get the added benefit of seeing the sunlight filtering through the trees and the mass of Cow Parsley as it moves gently to and fro in the breeze.
Whenever I find it looking like this I just have to stop and allow myself to bask in the beauty of it all.
Of course, it doesn鈥檛 last forever, so I always put in a little more effort to make sure my morning walks take me through the church yard at this time of year when nature shares one of its most delightful treasures with us.
