We got back from our half term break to find snowdrops flowering everywhere around here. It’s such a welcome sight because it really feels spring is around the corner and the dark winter days are finally over. Nature never lies.
Did you know there are more than 2500 varieties of snowdrops? Mind boggling… The latin name ‘Galanthus Nivalis’ literally means “milk flower of the snow” and contain a substance ‘galantamine’ which is used to treat symptoms of Alzheimer. In British folklore they represent purity and innocent, but their bulbs are poisonous and one single flower growing in a garden on its own symbolises death.
So don’t eat them but try finding those places around the country where they grow in their thousands creating amazing white carpets amongst the trees. So so beautiful.
Yesterday, my parents and I played tourists and went to visit such a place and although they thought I was slightly deranged taking them to see … ‘small white flowers’… they soon changed their mind.
We drove to the beautiful Cotswold village of Painswick home of the Rococo Garden (the country only surviving complete rococo garden built in the 1740s as a pleasure garden… great views, whimsical buildings… it’s the cutest thing).
That’s my mum… doing the tourist ‘thang’…
I’m thinking this red little folly would be a fantastic sewing studio…
there’s also a maze – I love mazes – the hedges spell ‘250’ as it was built on that anniversary of the garden.
This is a beautiful place regardless of the season but the snowdrops are really showing off at the moment…
The sun shone for us and the air was definitively still chilly… but… as William Wordsworth one said…
… Blue-eyed May
Shall soon behold this border thickly set
With bright jonquils, their odours lavishing
On the soft west-wind and his frolic peers;
Nor will I then thy modest grace forget,
Chaste snowdrop, venturous harbinger of spring,
And pensive monitor of fleeting years.
while you're ahead... 