Daffodils

My impression is that daffodils don’t get a lot of respect. They bloom early, briefly, and are long gone by the end of spring. However, they are tenacious. They don’t require coddling and they come back year after year.

I used to have a lot of them. They came with the house. My mother didn’t care for them and I suppose it is because they die off early. Daffodils are gone long before the weather is warm enough to sit outside and admire them.

Anyway, Mom asked me to dig them up, and I gave the bulbs to an appreciative friend. But a couple of them escaped my shovel.

Every spring those escapees reappear, doggedly persisting in unfriendly territory. The soil is poor, the eaves of the roof divert away most of the precipitation, and I haven’t found anything else that will thrive in my high desert environment. But the daffodils do.

Every year they steadily produce more and more greenery and blossoms. And when I walk by, it occurs to me that I could easily get rid of them, but I never do. They remind me of other daffodils in other places.

More than once, on old farmsteads or back in the trees, I have happened upon abandoned houses. If the season was just right, there might be daffodils growing around them, a remnant of someone’s long-ago attempt to decorate their home.

Fifty years ago I lived on a farm in the Ozarks, miles from a paved road. Some distance back in our property, along a dirt track, a house had once stood. The sole proof of its past existence was a low, battered foundation in the middle of nowhere, slowly being swallowed by the woods. Nothing else remained.

Whoever had lived there, or any fact of their existence, had long since passed from living memory. It had been a small house, isolated and, I expect, quite humble. The only thing I could be sure of is that someone, undoubtedly the woman of the household, sought to brighten their existence by planting daffodils all around the small dwelling.

When I see the daffodils in front of my own home, I still wonder briefly about who planted those around that little house. Was she there long? Was it a struggle? How long ago did she leave? Would she be surprised that the flowers still remained, the sole clue to her existence?

Of the people and the house, nothing remained except the foundation and the daffodils. And the foundation was gradually being worn away. It’s probably gone now. But I’ll bet the daffodils were there again, briefly, this spring.