The snowdrop has ever been the first flower of spring. Planted out by gardeners to cover whole banks with their seeds, our garden has hardly changed in ten years with most of the clumps of snowdrops staying where they were planted reticent to expand.
Until I built the wooden shed and the earth pile from the digging now has over forty snowdrops whose seeds must have been hidden in the soil and were just waiting for me to till or changes their position and give them more sun . . . or something. The others in the rest of the garden are the same but the few under the willow tree must have been secretly doing their work and now I wonder how many are hidden in the soil.
And what else is hidden? How many plants we thought lost or new plants we did not know were here, how many are waiting for their time. And reflecting upon the sudden revelation of new flowers I realised why my mother loves gardening. Not just for the beauty, but because flowers can be so like artists. Hidden sometimes for centuries and then found growing by someone who might not have been looking for them at all and certainly not expecting them. The discovered manuscript, the unveiled painting, the lost musician . . .
To be lost all that needs to happen is for no one to be looking anymore.