Snowdrop Dreaming

As one year ends and another begins, I search for a symbol, and the tiny snowdrop is my choice.. In some parts of the world, the slim green leaves are already making their way through the soil, searching for the light.  Here in the cold of a January Midwest winter, I can only dream of them, tucked into the soil, a few inches beneath the surface, waiting.      

                                   

A  Reality Check

As I read about others beginning to finding snowdrops, I couldn’t resist a little stroll into places in my own garden that had been unvisited for months.  When I knelt down and gently pulled the tattered leaves away from a spot where I remembered planting bulbs last fall, I found no sweet green shoots. Instead, I discovered tiny dried bulbs scattered on top of the frozen soil and unmistakable evidence of marauding squirrels and chipmunks. Devious little diggers all! With a heavy heart, I replaced the fragile blanket of leafy protection and cheered myself with the thought that surely some of the bulbs must have survived. 

It really is too early for me to find snowdrops I suppose, but some deep urging sent me in search of them anyway. So, I will continue to wait.

Waiting is a word I found myself hearing and using a lot this past year. Waiting is what gardeners learn to do. I know that when I finally walk back into the world waiting outside my door in spring, seeds and garden tools in hand, I will be greeted with something new and wonderful again. 

This is a favorite illustration from Sara Midda's book,

In and Out of The Garden

Just as the poppy became a memorial to the casualties of the First World War, so the snowdrops were seen as a symbol of consolation in the midst of another war, 60 years previous, by the British troops fighting in the Crimea. Following the freezing winter of 1855, the soldiers welcomed the flowers with delight, and The Times correspondent William Russell reported," The soil, wherever a flower has the chance of springing up, pours forth a multitude of snowdrops..."

The persistent power of a humble wildflower, refusing to be interrupted, or even displaced, by the brutal power of war, is a concept rich with the symbolism of good over evil. The healing powers of beauty and nature are always stronger than the human hands of destruction. An idea not to be forgotten.

So many years have gone by, each one with its own cold, dark winter. Yet spring has come to every one of them. It will continue to come, announced delicately and quietly by snowdrops the world over, the ones deep in a German forest, and the ones just outside my kitchen window. 

                                    - from Pieces of Us