What a joy! In the brief respite between the seemingly constant wind and rain of the last few weeks my pots of daffodils have flowered. Of course this totally expected event that happens every year we plant them should come as no surprise, but, there is always something extraordinary about this first real burst of spring colour.
We have several pots and planters of daffodils around Smithy Brook including a large Belfast sink beside the front door. Although we’ve already enjoyed the snowdrops and crocus’s it is the arrival of the daffodils which really starts the mind to believe that spring is actually here.
With meteorological spring starting on the 1st of March and astrological spring getting here barely three weeks later on the 20th March the hope of better weather and the anticipation of getting out in the garden makes this my favourite time of year.
Strange to think that on 15th April 1802 poet William Wordsworth took a walk with his sister Dorothy and a belt of daffodils they passed had such a similar effect on him that he wrote one of our most famous verses. 200 years ago the daffodil was lifting spirits after the cold dark winter days just as today.
I hope you are enjoying yours whatever the weather today.
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.
