Hints of Spring

Catkins, yellow and pollen grainy, hang from the hazels.  Cornus buds and new stems are swelling red.  There’s a single yellow crocus, where did it come from?   And in a sunny corner a crowd of blue Iris unguicularis with their tiger skin badges.  In the sitting room the little orange tree has fruit and buds, and longs to go outside but I said, not yet.  In the greenhouse two pots of new alliums show pleated leaves two  millimetres high – their names are Midnight Blue and Back to Black – and I am thrilled. They won’t flower, probably for years, because I bought them as sliced sections of bulbs.  Just got to live long enough for it.

Snowdrops are out – the doubles in their green lined tutus like fat ballerinas, the viridipice their outer petals touched with green, the lovely singles so modest, Galanthus elwesii tall and handsome, and the unidentified ‘Mules ears’ with broad leaves and petals banded green, from Mummy years ago.  How I love them all – but then I trawl through websites to find this Mules Ears, and suddenly I am furious, fed up with those damned galanthophiles going over flowers with magnifying glasses and dividing them into scores no hundreds of named varieties instead of opening their arms to the lot unfenced..

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