A welcome sight.

My favourite garden flowers, the  exotic looking snake's head fritillaries (Fritillaria meleagris),  are  blooming once again despite the current arctic weather. 

Vera Sackville-West had this to say about them in her book-length narrative poem The Land.

"And then I came to a field where the springing grass
Was dulled by the hanging cups of fritillaries,
Sullen and foreign-looking, the snaky flower,
Scarfed in dull purple, like Egyptian girls
Camping among the furze, staining the waste
With foreign colour, sulky-dark and quaint ..."

Extra. One consolation to be had from the Arctic conditions are the wonderful clouds over the beach.