The snowdrops have been slow this year, although they showed their armoured leaf tips as usual in the middle of January. The dark and hardened nib, the first part that you see pushing through the leaf mould, is specifically designed to spear the frozen ground.  In the last few winters their advance from the point of first showing to whiteness was uninterrupted, but the freeze, or the regularity of it this year, has kept them in check and me on tenterhooks.

The heightened anticipation that you feel in the winter depends upon such movement and, without fail, the snowdrops will have me on my hands and knees, rummaging for their new life. Although I like the winter and do not want to rush this roomy season, the galanthus are important for their precociousness which, like a flare going off, announces with pristine surety that there is now a tilt towards growth.