When I was up at Bowlees on Friday afternoon I noticed that the tips of the snowdrops were starting to come through in the garden of the visitor centre. So this morning I thought I'd keep my eye's open on my wander along the river bank with Tim to see if I could see any sign of them here. I thought I'd might get lucky and spot a few the first signs of them, as the the river had been very high the previous couple of days, probably about 15 feet above it's normal level. When the river has been so high all of the old leaves etc get washed away so it's easy to spot any new shoots coming through the soil. I checked the usual spots where I know there are snowdrops, but there wasn't any signs of new growth. Maybe it was still too early for them after the very cold winter we'd just had? Well I'd given up looking and was enjoying the warm sunshine, it was the first time in what seemed like ages that I hadn't had to wear a woolly hat or gloves while out walking. I was walking back through the village towards home when I was stopped dead in my tracks. There in a neighbours front garden were several clumps of snowdrops. Not just little green shoots like I was hoping to find, but these had flowers on! Now they might be some cultivated early flowering type, just mid January still seems really early for them to be flowering? Regardless, it's still a sign that Spring is on it's way. I will be keeping an eye open each day I take Tim along the river. Last year it was around the 20th of February when we saw the first 'wild' snowdrops flowering.  Apologies for the quality of the photograph, but it was taken on my mobile phone, I know I should have been carrying my big camera!!!!