The first snowdrops

click photo to enlarge
As a child I always looked for the first snowdrops that make an appearance in early January, and I continue to do so as an adult. When I was younger the small white flowers signified the first noticeable appearance of new life in the new year. I now know that other plants such as winter flowering heather and winter jasmine produce flowers before the snowdrops open their petals, but I still see them as the first step in the long march out of winter into spring. To a child the name is appealing and prompts the comparison of the crowded banks of flower heads with the way large flakes settle on the grass at the beginning of a fall of snow. To my adult mind the English name is so much more decorative, descriptive and appealing than the Latin Galanthus nivalis.

The first snowdrops have appeared in my part of the world, next to the foundations of a sheltered old house wall where they grew last year, perhaps benefiting from the leakage of warmth into the nearby soil. In a couple of weeks large drifts of the flowers will fleck garden borders, the churchyard, the sparse grass under the trees, and the banks of the stream that meanders through the village, giving me the opportunity for a wide-angle, contextual photograph. In the meantime here's a hand-held close-up of some of the "early birds."

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm macro (70mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f11
Shutter Speed: 1/30 seconds
ISO: 200
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

The golden daffodil

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It's not hard to work out the reason why the daffodil is so popular. When you've gone through the three cold, wet and dreary winter months of December, January and February, along it comes with its big, bold, bouncing blooms, their very yellowness shouting "Spring is coming!"

Up and down the country, in gardens and parks, roadsides and woods, the drifts of yellow bring a smile to people's faces, and focus their minds on the longer, warmer days around the corner. However, these virtues have led, in some places, to a mania for planting daffodils that has caused me, occasionally, to shout "Enough!" In the next few weeks the A6 road between Garstang and Lancaster will be lined by the blooms, each year ever denser as they multiply. And what is charming and welcoming in groups and clusters becomes a little too much when the roadside ranks of yellow stretch for miles. The other virtue of the daffodil - the ease with which it can be grown - has caused it to displace the many alternative bulbs and flowers that also herald spring.

So, today's sharply lit, contrasty photograph of one of the early daffodil blooms from my garden, is accompanied not by an attempt to do down this popular plant, but to make a plea for it to give way for a few more Glory of the Snow (Chionodoxa luciliae), cyclamen, Lily of the Valley (Convallaria majalis), Winter Aconite (Eranthis hyemalis) and Fritillary. Perhaps then we can cause a poet to be inspired to verse, as Wordsworth was with daffodils, by banks of Striped Squill (Puschkinia scilloides)!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm macro (70mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f18
Shutter Speed: 6.0
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -2.0EV
Image Stabilisation: Off