Stalking the Earth for a Winter Pick-Me-Up

I wonder if, when crafters await a new release of stamps to fuel their creative passions, it feels anything like a gardener stalking the arrival and bloom of her favorite plants.

I can speak to the latter, and good golly, it can feel excruciatingly long.

Last winter it was fa-reeeeeezing and snowy and subzero for way, way, way too many days, and when I saw the little tips of the snowdrops poke through the frozen ground in early January, I got so amped up, I photographed the leaf-strewn scene.

Check out those little nubs! All perky and fresh and purposeful. They look to be ready to keep up that momentum and burst forth from the ground in full splendor any day now, do they not? Well, I waited and I peeked and I waited and I tip-toed outside and peeked again and I waited and peeked. Waited. Peeked. Waited. Peeked. You get the idea.

A few MONTHS later, I was still looking at this.

That is not nice, Mother Nature!

I continued to wait and peek, and at last, by the second week of March, we had lift-off.

SWEET SNOWDROP REDEMPTION!

Man, that took forever, though, and these single snowdrops aren’t even the fancy double kind that need even longer to bloom! I just love the classic Galanthus nivalis, with their fat, droplet-like buds that open to simple nodding flowers. Over at my mother’s house, after she had to wait and peek for as many weeks as I did, we were rewarded with little scenes like this all over her garden beds, with the specialty bulbs she sources from around the world. I believe these are from Ireland:

Now remember, Susan H. Smith (my mama), likes things to be unique, the rarest of the rare. Her hybrid snowdrops (these are Galanthus ‘Ophelia’) are positively precious, are they not!? Worth the lengthy delay. So, let’s all just agree that it can be very hard to wait for things, be they new stamp sets or snowdrops. Which leads me to why you may be here today in the first place:

I have a new stamp set to share, it’s debuting as a digital image, AND — get this — it features the very plant that teased me along for so many weeks! Along with a few others... 

Winter Pick-Me-Up is ready to be plucked from the store right now! This set is actually two digital files, a bouquet and the coordinating sentiment, that, after purchase, is emailed to you directly. You then save the jpg image files from the email, print them out, and get to making a card the very same day. Nifty stuff right there!

I love the idea that the flowers in this bouquet could have been picked during a tip-toe through the winter garden ... snapping off a few pussy willow branches, bending down and rooting around in the leaves to get the glad-faced crocuses, and then, a few sweet snowdrops of course! Who wouldn’t be happy with a handful of that? A pick-me-up for sure.

Hope you’ll take some time to traipse through the blogs of the Bloom Brigade to see some of the snappy cards they’ve made with this set!

Christine Okken
Tosha Leyendekker
Stacy Morgan
Katie Sims
Leslie Miller

We’ve got another set coming on Sunday that’s part of my Winter Blitz Collection of digis for December. Can ya wait for it? I’ve already given you a peek...