We’re edging towards snowdrop time, their pristine pendant-petals peeking through the mud and cold, like tiny bright lanterns lighting the way to spring.

Here it is Lisbeth, Adam Bede’s mother, who is said to be as clean as a snowdrop.  A later reference has her in turn look at the face of a beloved young woman, as into a fresh-picked snowdrop, seeking its gentleness and purity.

May you have bunches of snowdrops nodding at you as you walk across blasted heaths and winter parks.

‘Clean as a snowdrop’.

Source: George Eliot, Adam Bede (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985 (1859)), p. 83

Photo credit: kapa65 at pixabay.com