The moon hangs in a black sky. The cold is full and whole, confident, with no threats to its crystalline heart.

But soon this certainty is pricked and needled, run through by delicate slips of bright green magic.

How can such tiny shoots have the energy to battle the frozen ground? They haven’t held hands with the sun in the many months that they lay dormant beneath the weeds and buzzing warmth of summertime’s bounty. But now, the grey-brown leaf mould is pierced by growing things, the winter is proven impermanent by the stalks of snowdrops.

Sun slanting in through black barren branches must warmed the ground just enough to convince the slumbering bulbs, bursting with pent up energy, that their moment had come.