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<\/p>\nToday, while dancing amidst hundreds of snowdrops in the pre-spring sun and brisk breezes, I spotted a honeybee.<\/p>\n
Well, no, that\u2019s not true.\u00a0 I wrote that line a little less than\u00a0a year ago and never completed the essay.\u00a0 Today it is cloudy and bees tend to stay close to home under those conditions.\u00a0 The nearest bees, to my knowledge, come from a pair of hives perhaps a mile away in a city park.\u00a0 But there are breezes a-plenty today, though not brisk\u2013it is over sixty degrees and glorious\u2013and yes, hundreds of snowdrops are dancing.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s only January! \u00a0 And many of these little beauties have been blooming for a month, oblivious to the relentless freeze\/thaw cycle of this strange winter.\u00a0 (It\u2019s the end of January and I have never gotten my sled out!)<\/p>\n
Snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis) are amazing; they have always been magical and wondrous to me, the first flowers of the year, shouting out life in a seemingly dead landscape.<\/p>\n
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\u00a0In Michiana where I grew up, I could expect to see these lovely harbingers breaking out of the snow in February, even though we had a good six more weeks of winter.\u00a0 Hard crusts of ice never deterred them.\u00a0 In more recent years they have come up earlier, and here in Central Indiana, I have come to expect at least some in late January; occasionally they have poked up as early as around the New Year.\u00a0 This year I had some budding at Christmas.\u00a0 I worried for them, but I need not have.\u00a0 Snowdrops have antifreeze in their leaves.\u00a0 The early bloomers, having survived several repeated bouts of nights in the \u2018teens, are as bright and bouncy as they were a month ago.\u00a0 Snowdrops not only assure us of spring\u2019s future arrival, but they generally last a long time, long enough to welcome the larger, more colorful daffodils and the delicate crocus that normally begin to appear in March.\u00a0 (This year, however, I have recently seen the odd daffodil in bloom.\u00a0 Something is clearly amiss with our climate.)<\/p>\n
Hoping soon to begin my own hive, I have taken an interest in the hives of honeybees in the afore-mentioned city park.\u00a0 A few years ago I noticed that some bees were out and about in very early spring with little hope of finding the sustenance they sought.\u00a0 I offered some of my snowdrops to the park, which they accepted.\u00a0 The transplants are doing very well and have spread (they are blooming as I speak).\u00a0 That\u2019s the other wonder of snowdrops\u2013how they multiply!\u00a0 The majority of my hundreds came from three small clumps dug up from my homeplace twenty years ago.\u00a0 My backyard is now filled with them, and more have migrated around to the front.\u00a0 This puzzled me for years until I read that the snowdrop\u2019s tiny seeds have a substance attractive to ants, and so they are spread by the insects.\u00a0 The bulbs, too, multiply, and these plants are survivors! \u00a0 The plant world offers role models for us all.<\/p>\n
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Today, while dancing amidst hundreds of snowdrops in the pre-spring sun and brisk breezes, I spotted a honeybee. Well, no, that\u2019s not true.\u00a0 I wrote that line a little less than\u00a0a year ago and never completed the essay.\u00a0 Today it … Continue reading