The normal order of things has arrived in our house out of the normal order.

Bunches of daffodils arrived over the weekend. Normally the first cut flowers of January, they were overtaken by beautiful blowsy tulips who arrived en masse for a birthday just over a week ago.

The weather of this curious winter is doubtless to blame. Tulips come from elsewhere and are grown in controlled greenhouses for the early part of the year. Daffodils come from just down the road and suffer the same weather as I do.

The daffodils in our kitchen probably started life as cut flowers a week or so ago in fields near Penzance. Then travelled in  temperature controlled luxury to London, were distributed to Marks and Spencer, where they were purchased and then driven down to us over the weekend.

Normally we can reliably buy daffodils by the roadside from early January . Everything is a little bit late and battered by the storms that keep rolling in. Even snowdrops seem a  bit behind their usual schedule.

These clumps of snowdrops are usually much more open to posing for photographs. The green stripes of their underskirts are one of my favourite shades of green.

Flowers in January bring a twinkle to the listless, slightly unfocussed days of mid-January. Arriving out of order is a discombobulating experience. But now the daffodils are in the kitchen and everything should fall into place. Onward to the second half of winter. Bring it on and let’s get it over with.