Over in Scotland, their Snowdrop Festival gets under way today. All over the country gardens are opening to show off their sheets of naturalised snowdrops or their collections of special forms of which, of course, there are hundreds. There’s even a conference on snowdrops at the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh. The picture of the snowdrops at the gardens at Dawyck, the satellite garden of Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh shows just a part of the spectacle.

Things are different here in Pennsylvania. [Yes, it’s time for the traditional “compare the winter weather” post.) My snowdrop collection hasn't even peeped through the soil - it's still under more than a foot of snow and probably will be till March. Not much to see. For while, as I write, it’s 39F/4C at Dawyck near Peebles in the Scottish borders, here in Pennsylvania it’s 9F/-12C. And a couple of weeks ago it was down to -11F/-24C. Not particularly good gardening weather.

But there are compensations – like this lovely ice formation I found on rocks by the Delaware River as I drove to the radio station the other day.

There follows, in particular for British readers, some pictures of winter over here. Click on each for a larger version.  You have snowdrops – at the moment we just have snow.