Our garden is full of snakes!

The snake's head fritillary Fritillaria meleagris is very near the top of my list of our most beautiful native flowers.
However, Vita Sackville-West, novelist, poet, exuberant aristocrat and co-creator of the glorious gardens at Sissinghurst Castle in Kent, was of a quite different mind calling it "a sinister little flower, in the mournful colour of decay." I must say that I can see what she means.