MinxterBLOOM

but until then, this snowdrop gallery is a feast. The webmaster is a Galanthus-phile who lives, I believe in Antrim at Colesbourne.  Colesbourne Park is home to a floribundant collection of snowdrops, open to the public on many occasions. The collection was built up by members of the Elwes family. 

I always think of two literature bits when i see snowdrops.

Neil Gaiman's  Stardust father and son, Dunstan and Tristan, carry a glass snowdrop that chimes.  See this entry in Neil's journal where he remembers his "snowdrops resolutions.  I like this name more than New Year's promises.

Seamus Heaney's poem is a response to the death of his baby brother Christopher.

Mid-Term Break

I sat all morning in the college sick bay
Counting bells knelling classes to a close.
At ten o'clock our neighbours drove me home.

In the porch I met my father crying -
He had always taken funerals in his stride -
And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.

The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram 
When I came in, and I was embarrassed 
By old men standing up to shake my hand 

And tell me they were 'sorry for my trouble' 
Whispers informed strangers that I was the eldest, 
Away at school, as my mother held my hand 

In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs. 
At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived 
With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses. 

Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops 
And candles soothed the bedside I saw him 
For the first time in six weeks. Paler now, 

Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple. 
He lay in a four foot box, as in his cot. 
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear. 

A four foot box, a foot for every year.