When I see Winter Aconites and Snowdrops I'm always cheered by their early flowers. They promise that spring is on the way. I saw these when I was out walking yesterday. They are particularly early this year. 

 

 

 There has been a lot of rain. I've crossed this low bridge into the village of Charlton in Hertfordshire many times over the years. Today it had become a ford.

 

 The River Hiz rises the other side of the village where bubbling springs feed from wet woods into a large millpond. When the water is this high it's a sure sign of a wet winter, particularly in recent decades after a pumping station was built nearby. There are about two hundred chalk streams in the world. Most are in southern England and the Hiz is one of them.

And it really is a very wet winter when the water floods from the back end of the woods into the fields beyond. 

 

 "The force that through the green fuse drives the flower" as Dylan Thomas once put it. Hellebore foetidus starts to bloom very early in the year, sometimes even before Christmas. Strange to say it is of the Buttercup family Ranunculaceae.

 

 Going potty. Winter is a good time to do jobs like sorting through the pots. Plastic is actually a good and durable material for something that's intended to be used over and over again. It's unfortunate that our epoch will be represented in the fossil record by a layer of plastic from objects that were mostly used once then thrown away.

 

Pretty basic but functional!

 

  A light fall of snow overnight (the first I've seen this winter). It's been a relatively mild winter in Southern England albeit damp. I welcome cold winters. It's part of the life cycle of nature in the northern hemisphere.

 A period of dormancy in plants is the precursor to the "green fuse" being lit in spring. Periods of chilling are needed both to enter and emerge from dormancy, a process sometimes referred to as vernalisation.  

 

 About this time last year I stood at the mouth of the River Lea where it meets the Thames at Bow Creek (above). I hatched the idea of using the Lee Valley Walk to follow the course of the river into Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire back to its source in the Chiltern Hills (Lee and Lea are alternate spellings). I intended to break it up into several stages as a project to be completed during 2020.

 Well, it didn't turn out like that. As John Lennon once put it: "Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans". Maybe this year...