Nature Notes: Daffodil Days

Daffy-down-Dilly
Has come to town
With a yellow petticoat
And a pretty green gown
- Nursery rhyme by Nathaniel Hawthorne

For me, spring officially arrives with the sweet scent of daffodils, my favorite flowers. We have a single clump of the big, classic, yellow kind at the corner of the porch, and they are in full bloom. The moon was out in the daytime when I got home on Thursday, too - double the magic!

When I was a child, we lived above a garden on the banks of a river. In her younger years, my grandmother had planted daffodils over the entire bank down to the garden. There they cheerfully spread over the years to become a carpet of golden blossoms. Following the stone steps my grandfather had carved into the hillside, we breathed in their fragrance and glowed in their reflected light.

We picked armloads of them for the house at Easter, where they returned joy in full measure to my then house-bound grandmother. To this day, the sight of a daffodil sweeps me back to those childhood holidays ... Sunrise service, new patent leather shoes, scratchy layered petticoat and a frilly dress, white cotton gloves and a hat with ribbons ... egg hunting and Easter basket chocolates and ham for supper ... the whole family gathered, eating and laughing together ... ballerina-twirling through the daffodil perfume.



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