WILD WEDNESDAY - LEUCOJUM VERNUM

Until a few days ago, I had never ever seen these pretty little flowers let alone knew their name, but that changed when I went to visit my friend, Julia, and had a walk around her garden.  Julia, her husband, Melvin, and Mr. HCB and I have been friends for many, many years and one of the common bonds we had was that we all loved gardening.

Since Julia’s husband died, she has moved house and has a slightly smaller garden, although I know, like us, she could never live anywhere without a garden.  On our wander around the garden, I saw a clump of these pretty little flowers and when we chatted about them, I told Julia that I had never seen them before.  She called them “Spring Snowflakes” and very kindly said that she would dig a clump up for us when they finished flowering, but said that they were quite rampant!  We don’t mind rampant, as it helps to keep the weeds down!

I took my leave of her and on my way to meet a friend saw more of these lovely flowers, in a park nearby in the wild, so took a few shots.  Funnily enough, I was reading the Sunday Express on Monday evening and came across a photograph of the very same flowers with their Latin name, Leucojum Vernum or Spring Snowflake.  

It said in the article that they were “closely related to the snowdrop although it doesn’t have the accolade of  being the first flower to push out of the ground in winter, but it is certainly as beautiful and creates a bigger impact as the plant is much taller, with its nodding, bell-shaped, pure white flowers with delicate green tips.”

I decided that it would be a good subject for Wild Wednesday, as these were out “in the wild”  so went back this morning and took some more shots and here they are - beautiful Spring Snowflakes enjoying their 15 minutes of fame on Blip.  I have done a little fartnarkling using my PhotoRoom App to get the black background and rather like the way they stand out. 

The weather has turned quite cold, even down here in the south of England, but that’s no bad thing - Mr. HCB has a very sore knee and we had intended sowing our Wild Flower Meadow seeds in the grass today, but he has said he will rest while it is so cold and hopefully, it can be done next week.  I’m so glad he is being sensible - for a change!

We are just hoping we don’t get the snow that has been predicted - we don’t mind flowering snowflakes, but I’m not too keen on the other sort, although Mr. HCB loves the snow.

“In the spring, 
     I have counted 136 different 
          kinds of weather 
               inside of 24 hours.”
Mark Twain


P.S.  The extra shot shows some beautiful daffodils, also in the wild, which reminded me of William Wordsworth's wonderful poem, with the famous lines 
"When all at once, I saw a crowd,
A host of golden daffodils."