About 25 years ago we planted daffodil bulbs on the
south side of our house where they would bloom the earliest. We enjoyed the bright yellow blooms in April
for years. But 10 years ago, we decided
to have a professional landscaper come in to install a patio and redo the front
and side yard plantings. We opted to
have fewer flowers and more blooming shrubs planted to provide more privacy between
the patio and the road that runs in front of the house.
I spent the better part of a day digging up flower
bulbs. I didn’t want to just have the
landscapers crush the bulbs as they did their work. That seemed an unfitting repayment for the
delight that they had provided each spring.
The concern that I had was it was the heart of summer and the time for
planting bulbs is late fall. I replanted
them anyway at the edge of the old garden up against the encroaching willow
brush and ash trees.
Two things happened the following spring. The transplanted daffodils did indeed spring
up against the tree line. One tends to
think of flowers as delicate, when indeed they are tenacious. Especially early bloomers like
daffodils. They begin to sprout most
often as soon as the snow recedes, only to need to wait patiently due to late
season snows and last stretches of freezing temperatures. They are undeterred. They are also prolific. Somehow clusters of daffodils are now
scattered across the whole edge of the yard and a few clusters are now even pushing
back into the advancing willow brush.
And secondly, despite my digging and the digging of the
landscapers, some daffodils still sprang up along the south side of the
house. I’m not sure how those bulbs escaped
my garden spade and the landscaper’s heavy-duty equipment. But there they were, blooming amidst all of
the hardy perennial flowering shrubs, all still tight-budded and dormant. Although the concern from the landscaper was
that they wouldn’t really go well with his design, they made our hearts happy
and they added a nice splash of color to eyes that were weary of winter white
and the browns of March and early April.
You have to appreciate their beauty and their tenacity.
There is something less domestic about these survivors
against the odds. I chuckle that we have
the only “wild” daffodils in the neighborhood.
They are an unplanned, but beautiful legacy for whomever makes their
home here after we have gone. Perhaps
they too, when they see the yellow blooms in their Aprils, will, like me, go to
the bookshelf and turn a page to Wordsworth’s poem:
Wandered Lonely as a
Cloud, by William Wordsworth
I wandered lonely as a cloud that floats on high o'er vales
and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd, a host, of golden
daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees, fluttering and dancing
in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine and twinkle on the milky
way,
They stretched in never-ending line along the margin of a
bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance, tossing their heads in
sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they out-did the
sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay, in such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought what wealth the show
to me had brought:
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.
His Peace,
Deacon Dan
Photo by Chris Linnett on Unsplash
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