Blåsippa - Anemone hepatica - pennywort

Although there is still snow on the ground I started this warm and sunny day by looking for flowers in the forest on the edge of our garden. There are two plants flowering this early and I found them both within a few meters.
The first is Daphne mezereum, (tibast in Swedish) which produces small pink flowers on a bare woody stem, the leaves coming later. The flowers hadn't fully opened so maybe that's a future blip. Incidentally, the whole plant is very poisonous and I think all the examples growing near our garden come from one plant which our neighbour had in his garden. When his first grandchildren appeared around 8 years ago he dug it up and dumped it in the forest to avoid the risk to the grandkids. Being a tough plant it rerooted itself and now there are at least 15 0f them!
The second flower I found was "blåsippa", (Anemone hepatica). One of its English names is pennywort. The purple-blue flowers were lurking in a dark area of leaf mould and almost seemed to glow in the sun. These plants produce a bud containing the whole compressed flower in the autumn. This bud sits just under the ground all winter and as soon as the sun shines and the snow melts it explodes into action.
Both these plants avoid competition for pollinators by producing their flowers so early, before the other plants have got going. In the way of nature they also provide food for the earliest pollinators and so the cycle continues.
Jan and I also took a longish walk today (2 hours) and I changed the wheels on the Kia Ceed so we now have summer tyres on that car. This is a twice-yearly ritual. Between those two events we sat out in the sun and ate a snack and chatted on the phone to our Blackburn family.
All-in-all a very satisfactory day!