My First Daffodil

 

Daffodils may be my favorite flower. I certainly have loved them longer than any other. When I was a child I waited eagerly for the plump buds to spring open in my grandmother's yard. She had oodles of them dripping down the slope in the back of her house. They were even growing in a wide swath across the road around the vegetable garden. I picked huge handfuls and took them inside to Granny. As far as I remember Granny never had any flower arrangements except the ones I picked for her. Sometimes she seemed a little surprised but she always accepted them with a smile and found some container to stuff them in. I can see them in my mind's eye, packed in a tight bunch in a glass. They stood out in happy contrast to the dark dresser and the white vanity cloth that covered the dresser top. Granny liked flowers, but I suspect that she liked them better outside. I surely liked them inside and out, just as I do now.
Granny did have some plants in pots. One was an asparagus fern. There were others too, but she kept them in a flower pit in the winter and on the front porch in the summer.
Daffodils signal the end of winter for me. As I have often said, it is good that I do not live in a place with "real" winter. They start to bloom in January and February and unless you have many different late varieties, they are done by the end of March. Even though the weather may turn cold, even into the teens, and the creeping cold and wet has not left yet, daffodils give hope that it will be too warm very soon.
For years we planted more daffodils every fall, and now there are clumps everywhere randomly placed across the front yard. Just when you think you have the pattern figured out, they pop up in the wrong place. It was a wonderful tradition and only laziness keeps me from continuing. In the fall when they should be planted, the ground is often hard and dry. Some places require a pick ax to pierce. I never cut the front yard till the foliage begins to dry. By mid May the yard has begun to look ratty and unkept, but like my great grandmother who wouldn't allow the garden to be plowed till the poppies finished, I refrain from using the mower over the daffodils till they begin to dry. The flowers next year are worth a few weeks of untidy grass. Not that I care that much about lawns anyway. That's one of the good things about country living- nobody is going to complain about my uncut grass. The main reason to keep grass cut is to keep the snakes at bay. Someone once told me snakes hated the noise of a lawnmower. I rather think it comes down to not having enough good hiding places.