A Tale of a Hundred Daffodils

Hello Friends!

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 be but 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.

How could I write about daffodils and not include William Wordsworth's most famous poem?  What a sight he must have seen before him to inspire such moving and lasting imagery? 

The daffodil is the official flower of Wales, and is often worn by Welsh men, women, and children on March 1st, Saint David's Day, instead of the more pungent and less fragrant leek, also an emblem of Welsh nationality. 

Here is an amusing tale of what started out as just thirty daffodil bulbs that went forth and multiplied.  I didn't find it amusing as it unfolded, quite the opposite, but now I look back and I laugh.

Once upon a long, long time ago, in another lifetime, I lived in a tiny cottage overlooking a pretty bay and fishing harbour.  I knew I would not live there forever, so when I bought thirty Spring flowering daffodil bulbs, I planted them up in pots.  The flowered well and brought me much joy.

Time passed, and the day came when I had to move away, so I brought the pots of daffodils a few miles down the road to my parents cottage for them to plant out in their garden, and I went away.  I went away for four years, and during the Spring following my return, I was utterly amazed how the daffodils had multiplied.  They now filled the borders around the cottage making a delightfully colourful springtime display.

There was, however, one problem.

We all know how messy daffodils get once they have flowered and are dying back.  That was the rub.  There were, by now, so many daffodils that for weeks on end it all looked such a mess.  So, my mother and I came up with a plan.  

It was genius! Or so we thought.  I'd dig up all the bulbs from the borders, dry them off, store until September, then we'd pot them up into tubs of fresh compost that could then be put in the borders while in flower during early and mid Spring, and moved out of the way, out of sight, to die back in their unsightly manner, keeping the borders fresh and pretty.

I spent three days of back breaking work, digging out bulbs that, by now, had gone deep into the ground. We had over 300 bulbs!  I put them to dry, then stored away until needed.  

We bought the tubs; we bought bags and bags of compost.  Time passed, and we were ready to plant up the pots.

We set our pots up, began filling them with compost, and went to fetch the bulbs from the garden shed.  But wait! Where are the bulbs?  What has happened? Not a bulb to be found!  Not even an empty sack in which they were stored.  What had happened to the bulbs?

We puzzled for ages, not realising that there was a rather large square of freshly dug soil in a corner of the garden.  When my father came home, we asked him if he knew anything about the missing bulbs, and to our dismay he cheerfully told us that, the previous day, he'd only gone and dug them back in, they were under all that freshly turned soil.

You can go off people, and you can go off daffodils!  My father thought it was funny; he and I had words.  Not for the first, nor the last time over gardening differences of opinion.

I got over it, and the daffodils flourished in their new home, but over the years they multiplied even more, so I dug them up and gave them away.  There's only so many daffodils a small garden can hold, after all. 

Probably the prettiest are the double ones, but sadly they tend to succumb to the bad, Spring storms that prevail during March, right as they begin to flower, so this year, with advance warning of an impending week of wild, wet and windy Welsh weather, I picked them and brought them in, in tight bud.  If you've scrolled this far, you've seen their progress, but, sadly, this was the scene that greeted me this morning. 

I guess they keep on growing and getting heavier after they've opened and keep on drinking up the water.  So sad to see their slender stems bent over with the weight, but it is what it is, and short of wiring them there's very little I can do to prevent this happening.

At least I've had a few days enJOYment from them, while yet another week of Spring storms lashed our coast from Tuesday until Sunday.

For those of you who don't know, the stoneware jug is over seventy years old and was a gift from my dear mother to  her mother.  It is now in my care, and I have always loved this jug, even more so now.  As a child, I loved to see it on a table filled with daffodils which seem to look so well in it.  I named it the Daffodil Jug, and it is known by that name to this day.

Until next time

Stay safe and stay well.