Dancing with Daffodils

When my kids were small, we moved from a three-bedroom suburban home to a one-hundred-year-old cabin. To say that the move was an adjustment for the children is a mild understatement. The kids learned to pull strings to turn on lights instead of flipping a wall switch. They were introduced to roosters, mice and mutts, plus swarms of bees, ladybugs and termites. With no central air or heat, we experienced true seasons for the first time - both inside and outdoors. One of those experiences came by way of sunflowers and daffodils.

We moved the first week of October. During that week, the kids spent most of their time playing in a next-door hayfield. One afternoon, they came running back to the cabin with a handful of sunflowers. We learned that hunters had sowed the seeds to attract doves. As I walked with them to the seed plot, I was amazed at the number of sunflowers that covered the hillside! I had fresh sunflower bouquets everyday for that entire season! Those sunflowers were just the first of many floral surprises we experienced during the next year...especially the following spring.

The lady who had lived in the cabin for her entire life was a master gardener of perennials. So, after a cold (COLD) winter, the spring thaw was welcomed by every member of my family. What we did not expect with that thaw was a floral display of epic proportions. I remember Matt slamming the screen door, barrelling through the dogtrot and breathlessly handing me a bouquet of daffodils. (When he was little, he loved to pick me flowers!) I scolded him about picking all of our flowers, and he assured me that they were just coming up out of the ground everywhere! That summer, we were treated to Shasta daisies, Vibrant Orange day lilies and Dinner Plate dahlias as big as your hand! We were living in this hundred-year-old cabin that was situated in right in the middle of a secret garden!

I have always been a fan of daffodils. How does something so bright and yellow just awake after a long winter's sleep? My grandmother loved old perennials as much as Mrs. Beulah. She welcomed hyacinths, Easter lilies, irises, paper whites and jonquils as if she were anticipating a long-awaited visit from her favorite relatives. Daffodils were (and are) mood changers!

The English Romantic poet William Wordsworth understood the restorative and stimulating value of daffodils. In his poem, I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud, he writes about the dancing daffodils.

"For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils."

He also said, "If one daffodil is worth a thousand pleasures, then one is too few."

American Imagist poet Amy Lowell called the early daffodil, "the yellow trumpeter of laggard spring."

In her poem, To an Early Daffodil, she writes that the purpose of the daffodil is "to fill the lonely with a joy untold." With such an esteemed mission, is it any wonder that the daffodil arrives with such rare ambition and beauty?

Dianne ; )