Posted in Personal life, Writing

Snowdrops vs Daffodils

photo of roadsign to Hawkesbury with snowdrops

(This post first appeared in the February issue of the Hawkesbury Parish News)

photo of snowdrops on the grass verge beside the road
Snowdrops by the roadside between Hawkesbury Upton and Wotton under Edge

Weary of the continuing long dark nights, today I drove to Wotton in the daylight for the first time this year. Catching sight of the snowdrops lining the roadside banks cheered me up no end.

Visions of their natural successors in order of flowering – daffodils, wild garlic, bluebells – rushed through my imagination like a speeded-up nature film, fast forwarding me to spring.

Despite the plummeting temperature, I felt warmer than I had done for days.

Not for nothing do snowdrops symbolise hope in the traditional language of flowers.

I was reminded of the effect that daffodils had on Wordsworth, buoying him up long after he had got back to his cottage in the Lake District:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

William Wordsworth – from I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

(click here to read the poem in full, courtesy of The Poetry Foundation)

I like to think that had Wordsworth chosen to settle in Hawkesbury rather than Grasmere, he might have serenaded snowdrops instead of daffodils.

Though he might have found it harder to find a word to rhyme with them.

Author:

English author of warm, witty cosy mystery novels including the popular Sophie Sayers Village Mysteries and the Gemma Lamb/St Bride's School series. Novels published by Boldwood Books, all other books by Hawkesbury Press. Represented by Ethan Ellenberg Literary Agents. Founder and director of the Hawkesbury Upton Literature Festival. Course tutor for Jericho Writers. UK Ambassador for the Alliance of Independent Authors. Lives and writes in her Victorian cottage in the heart of the beautiful Cotswold countryside.

2 thoughts on “Snowdrops vs Daffodils

    1. I thought I heard the drizzling rain
      Sprucing up my drooping snowdrops
      When I looked out, ’twas all in vain,
      The sky was clear, and there were no drops!

      (Abysmal!)

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