I was watching the snow fall on some snowdrops in my garden, and started thinking about these symbols of Spring.
Recorded growing wild in the UK in the 1770s, snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis) were probably introduced much earlier. These ‘milk flowers of the snow’ are entwined with religious imagery – notably as a symbol of Candlemas on 2 February, the feast to celebrate the Virgin Mary. They are also symbols of hope and light in Floriography (the ‘language of flowers’), and Wordsworth put these symbols together in his poem ‘To A Snowdrop’.
“Chaste snowdrop, venturous harbinger of spring / And pensive monitor of fleeting years!”
William Wordsworth, To A Snowdrop (1819)
Symbols like this are common in nature, and inform our practice here at The Natural Coaching Company.
In this case there is a prompt to reflect on the year ahead. What if we started our annual planning with a pure, clean slate? What if we could leave the challenges and negativity of 2020 behind. We could start afresh, with a hopeful outlook? Then what would we aim for?
That’s a lot from a few snowdrops.
How could nature guide your thinking about the rest of the year?