When I visited a county-run garden last week, the last thing that I expected to find was new growth. As I described in an earlier posting about a mockingbird, the landscape was bleak and desolate, largely bereft of color. From a distance I spotted a small patch of green. Moving closer to investigate, I discovered several small groupings of small white flowers that were starting to bloom.
A sign near one of the groupings indicated that the flower is a Giant Snowdrop (Galanthus elwesii), native to Turkey and from Greece to Ukraine. I don’t know flowers very well, but the information that I find on-line suggests that these little beauties are blooming several months earlier than usual.
My skills at taking flower photos have gotten a little rusty from disuse these last few months. Following some early advice of my photography mentor, Cindy Dyer, an expert in photographing flowers, I got down down in the dirt to try to shoot these little flowers from a low angle. Cindy usually strives to have a beautiful green background for flowers, but that was largely impossible at this time of the year, with dominant shades of gray and brown. It was also a real challenge to get any kind of depth and definition with the pure white flowers.
Typically we have to wait until spring for signs of new growth and renewal—this winter I got an early reminder and an advance preview.
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Mike Powell 