Snakesheads

Today I started to wake, opened my eyes, sought out the sunlight and stretched my back.
Maybe it's nearly spring - nearly time to to shed my skin and feel good again.
Nearly, because it's only warm out of the relentless, chilling, starvation wind.

The sequence of renewal has started but it progresses only slowly.  The coltsfoot is first, as usual in the shelter of the cliffs.

A lesser stag beetle is found under a log, comatose but alive and waiting for its time to strut and fret his hour upon the woodland stage.

 

 

Moschatel raises a tentative bud, and a rare patch of wild daffodils remains furled, unwilling to greet the uncertain sun.

 

In a garden, a lawn of snakeshead fritillaries is dotted with pink, the start of a glory that should already be here.

And an early chiffchaff chimes the birds into life, "as if every note had been the hammering of a tiny nail into winter's coffin".
Edward Thomas wrote this towards the end of In Pursuit of Spring, a work that seems all the more poignant in this slow chilled season.