Anyone driving past Cruden Old Church the other day might have seen a figure lying in the car park. Nothing to worry about: no one had suddenly taken ill. It was all in the cause of photography. I discovered that to see snowdrops at their best you had to get right down and look up at them. That’s quite hard when they grow only a few inches from the ground and hold their beautiful white and green heads down. It was a struggle getting my camera low enough to see them at their best. At times I held the camera upside down, but the most successful position was with me on my side and my cheek pressed on the ground. The result was well worth the effort, I think

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There seem to be snowdrops everywhere at this time of year, not just in the church car park. Wandering past the former church manse I saw a huge carpet of snowdrops in the garden.

And those brave enough to scramble up the banks of the burn below the church stables will find clumps of these lovely white flowers springing from the carpet of dead leaves.

It is not just in the countryside that the snowdrops are in bloom.  In Hatton they can be seeen under hedges, among the grass and undergrowth on verges, even on the bank near the Hatton Mill close to the devastation caused by the roadworks at the collapsed bridge.

An of course you will find them in gardens too.  If the driver who saw me in the car park at Cruden Old Church drove past my house in Hatton, he could be excused for thinking some terrible devistation had hit the area, for there on the garden path was another supine figure -this time with a close-up lesns to capture the little flower in all its glory.

With the snowdrops in full bloom, Spring must be on the way.