The First Snowdrops

Last year, mum and dad went to various Garden Open Days and usually came back full of enthusiasm, with grand plans for planting things to beautify the Vodka Bower.

After visiting a snowdrop festival, they came back with 2,000 of the blighters! Mum spent a good long time on her hands and knees - perhaps she was praying for the other poor donkeys in danger of being transported to the salami factory - but there was a lot of huffing and puffing and lamentations that 2,000 snowdrops didn't cover a very large part of the hill, and that a further 6,000 might be required.

She gets these enthusiasms then bitterly regrets them and spends the next week creaking around, back half bent. Rosie laughs her head off, nearly splits her piebald cob sides as it means no riding for her - she really encourages this sort of gardening as she benefits from more time off.

There has been a lot of muttering recently, things like 'everyone else's snowdrops are out now' 'can't you see what a big display of snowdrops they have' 'they must be a good six inches tall and look at the size of the clumps'. Then there is a lot of walking up and down the hill peering at the ground, first of all hopefully, then sadly with mutterings about 'can't even see ONE of them - they can't all be dead!'.

Finally this week eureka - there are at least six snowdrops on the hill. They are only about 2 inches tall, and wouldn't even so much as be a canape for a Vodka donkey, but the amount of joy they have generated is very disproportionate to their impact on the landscape......

Hate to think how excited they are going to be if all 2,000 of them put in an appearance.....