Every year, I look for it. It’s become a kind of ritual: not the performative sort, not something staged for anyone else, but a private habit of noticing. A moment of quiet attention that arrives somewhere between winter and spring, when the world is still holding its breath. Even though I’m back in the U.K. and no longer need to navigate the snow and ice of Switzerland, these days can still be sharp with cold: the light has a quality to it, a softening perhaps, but not yet warmth. Everything still looks dormant. Everything still looks as though it might remain this way for longer than we can bear. I walk the same path with my dog, to particular sheltered spot where I know it grows, and I look.
And then, suddenly one day, it’s there. A small cluster of white blossom scattered across dark branches: stark, delicate, and defiant. A whisper. The first visible proof that the season is turning. Sometimes hope is stark, sometimes it’s small. Sometimes, like this year, it appears while the world is still cold, while the sky is still heavy, while you are still carrying the residue of whatever winter has asked of you. Hope doesn’t always arrive once everything has improved. Sometimes it arrives first, as a sign that something is possible. That the Imbolc light is returning.
Blackthorn carries meanings that feel honest rather than romantic. It’s associated with protection, resilience, and the endurance of hardship. It speaks of difficulty weathered and strength held quietly. There is nothing sentimental about the thorned branches of the Blackthorn. It doesn’t invite you in without caution and it doesn’t soften itself for the sake of beauty.
I have Blackthorn blossom tattooed on my back, and it is one of the most personal symbols I carry. I chose it because seeing it for the first time one year gave me a glimmer of something I didn’t know I was missing. I have learned, as many of us do, that transformation rarely arrives as a clean, triumphant moment. It doesn’t come with certainty or clarity, neatly resolved. More often, it begins as a loosening, or a dissolving: a slow shift beneath the surface long before anything outwardly looks different. The flower that comes early, the one that I ritualistically seek out. The quiet return of hope, written into the hedgerow.
In Jungian terms, there is a kind of inner winter we must sometimes pass through: a descent into shadow, uncertainty, and the parts of ourselves we have avoided or outgrown. Old identities loosen. Old beliefs lose their grip. The structures we relied on begin to crumble, and what replaces them is not immediately clear. That stage can feel like loss. It can feel like the ground disappearing. But sometimes it’s necessary.
To immerse in botanical art is to be reminded of something: a symbol, repeated gently a story, offered again. The wheel of life is turning. Something is shifting. Something is already beginning, something is ending. This is what change truly is, I think.
And when the blossom arrives, it feels like a gift, not because I earned it, but because I noticed it. The quiet return of something against all odds and whispering that the future is already on its way.
Market stall dates:
Bradford Upon Avon, Holy Trinity Church- 7th March
Avebury Henge Shop- 8th March
Blenheim Palace Flower Show – 19th, 20th, 21st June 2026
Find some of my work at The Old George Inn at South Cerney, in aid of Pancreatic Cancer Research website: https://www.oldgeorgeinnpub.co.uk/