Daffodils

I took a ride yesterday on a beautiful, sunny day. You know spring is coming when you can ride through the countryside and see little clumps of yellow flowers nodding in the breeze. When we first moved here I pointed out these beautiful little daffodils and commented on them. My friend turned to me and said "You mean the March Lilies?" "No the daffodils ", I replied. She nodded, "Yes, the March Lilies". That's when I realized that the flowers I had known for years as daffodils have several names.

In this county they are March Lilies. Makes, sense. They bloom in March (sometimes April or February on good years) and they are kind of lily like. So, OK, March Lilies it is. However, if you go the area along the Ohio river where we once lived, they go by the name of Easter flowers. That's stretching it a little but they do bloom around Easter time. In other areas they are known as buttercups.

Whatever you call them they are a living tribute to the hands that planted them to beautify a homestead or farm. They are not wild flowers, nor native to the area. Those bright clumps of flowers that grace roadsides, fields, fence rows or old house sites were once the pride of some homemaker. She traded for the bulbs or carried them with her and planted them in her new home to brighten her day. The years pass and the home may disappear but the flowers remain. They multiply and drift with the movement of the soil through winter freezes and thaws or spring rains. They flow down hillsides with sunny abandon. They mark old foundations of long forgotten homes. They glow in roadside ditches and dance in fence rows. They forever stand as a monument to a place that was once loved.

Our old house stands on the foundation of an even older house. The first year we lived there I was overjoyed in the spring to discover these beautiful harbingers of spring growing in the front field. Mine are treasures, in that they are the delicate double daffodils that look like miniature, yellow peonies. They are downhill from the house and I am sure they were originally planted around the first home's doorway. Over the years they have migrated through the downward movement of the soil to now bloom in the field. I never look at them that I don't think of the woman who lovingly planted those treasured bulbs all those years ago.

I hope that someday, something that I do will brighten the world for those who follows me.