On a dreary January morning, as I walked through the rainy farmers’ market, I passed a girl in a yellow raincoat holding a perfect bunch of snowdrops. It’s unlike me to accost a stranger, but this star of glossy leaves surrounding a cluster of drooping pale flower heads was irresistible—I had to ask where she bought them. ‘At the end of the alley’, she pointed. I thanked her and hurriedly turned the corner.
There, leaning against a wall with a large basket of delicate ivy-wrapped bunches, stood the snowdrop farmer, a woollen hood pulled over her long, grey hair. Affixed to the basket was a sign that read ‘Snowdrops £1.50 a bunch—from my snowdrop farm’, In this long, dark month, could there be a more romantic notion than a snowdrop farm? I happily bought two bunches. Not long afterwards, my own basket filled with vegetables and bread, I passed the snowdrop farmer on the hill, hair free and flowing, carrying an empty basket.
I never saw her again, but I sometimes imagine the snowdrop farm—an ivy-edged distant field of fragile, milk-white flowers. I took my own snowdrops home with a gladdened heart and placed them in a jar of water at the sunny spot on my mantlepiece, my house sweetened by the breath of spring.
Writing this—the smallest January story I know—I have been hiding in my loft room study, a cloud of words drifting out through the half-open door. Last year, shortly after watching the snow moon rise over the sea, I signed the contract for my second book. Yesterday, the night of the wolf moon, I finished writing it. This coming book is not about the moon, but the moon floats through its pages nonetheless. Soon, so soon now, I’ll be able to tell you all about it.
Here’s what I’ve been reading and loving this month: