Daffodils, overnight!

Cicely Mary Barker, The Daffodil Fairy, www.flowerfairies.com

We had a very warm couple of days but then the weather turned gray, gloomy and cold again, with only a sprinkle of snowdrops and one lone narcissus up to prove that I had in fact labored long and hard to plant dozens of new bulbs for this spring. Imagine my delight, then, when I got up this morning to find three whole patches of early daffodils in bloom!

I love daffodils — they may be my favorite flower, inching ahead of hyacinths, roses, and even lilies of the valley. I’m always so happy to see their brightness against what still looks like a wintry, though snow-free, landscape. Do you have bulbs coming up yet? What are your favorites?

Featured image: The Daffodil Fairy, by Cicely Mary Barker.

Saturday Snippet: A poem

This week’s Saturday Snippet is from a poem called “For and Against the Environment”, by D. M. Black, from a favorite anthology, “The Oxford Book of Garden Verse.”

I have come out to smell the hyacinths which again in this

North London garden

Have performed a wonderful feat of chemistry and hauled

that delectable perfume

out of the blackish confection of clay and potsherds which

feebly responds when I name it flower-bed;

and so wet was the Spring that I clipped the grass with

shears, to prevent the mower sliding in mud,

and my attempt to dig the beds to enhance their fertility

foundered caked with clods.