Every spring, I anxiously await the first green sprouts in my garden. Part of the excitement is the fact that there is finally something green to look at and part of the excitement is seeing my flowers – especially my daffodils – appear in ways and places I don’t remember from the year before. As every gardener knows, there is constant change and evolution in the garden. Bulbs planted the fall before may or may not appear. They may or may not look like the pictures we see in catalogs. Sometimes, bulbs skip a year and seem to disappear, only to come back flourishing the following year. I’ve found this to be particularly true of my daffodils.
I started planting pretty traditional (yellow and a few white) daffodils over a decade ago. Then, I added smaller buds and different colors and bulbs with a more expanded blooming season. Count in transplanting and dividing daffodils and buying bulk packs of daffodils with no identifying features – and you get the picture. My garden is full of daffodils and surprises every year.
Daffodils always make me happy and for the past two springs, their appearance has been healing and hopeful. This year, the daffodils came 3 weeks early – just when I and so many others – really needed a bit of color and happiness in our lives.
I wasn’t aware of the Wordsworth poem (I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud) devoted to daffodils until recently when a friend suggested I read it. Wordsworth based the poem on walks he had with his sister in the English countryside. His joyful words make me smile as I write this reflection and remind me of the importance of dancing with the daffodils every year.
I hope this poem makes you smile, too !!!
I 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.