"Let's start the New Year right..."

"Let's watch the old year die, with a fond good-bye, and our hopes as high as a kite;
How can our love go wrong, if we start the New Year right?" 
                                                                                        - Bing Crosby song 

I have decided that Candlemas should be the true New Year. The first of January didn't feel in the least like a new year to me, and as to having the end of the old year on one day, and the beginning of the new one on the next, I find it incomprehensible. Such a rush! It hardly leaves time for the soul to turn round on the spot, let alone change gear. Last year, therefore, I decided to bid farewell to the dying year on Hallowe'en, and now I prepare myself to welcome in the new 'living' one on Thursday, which will be Candlemas*.  

Not that there has been much 'dying' around here. Today I saw National Trust advertising Snowdrops in February at one of their properties, but I shall be surprised if there are any snowdrops left by February. Despite the two cold-snaps we've had since Christmas (the second of which is still upon us), and the traditional show of bare, spidery trees displaying their naked silhouettes against slate-grey skies, the last few weeks have seen the coming of what feels suspiciously like Spring, and the flowers are coming on like Billy-o. Only the other day I noticed a new peach rosebud in the left-hand flower bed, and the yellow aconites and purple periwinkles are making a fair show at ground level. The snowdrops, of course, are abounding, and everywhere their little white caps crowd together in little clusters amongst the grass.

And as to the daffodils! After that day a few weeks ago, when I counted fifteen of them outside the post office, I gave up altogether... 

*(Which probably means I ought to make some New Year's Resolutions. Only I can't think of any. Is that a good sign, or a very bad one?!)