Daffodils

It's been a long winter. This neck of the woods has been smothered in snow this year. Not blanketed, mind you. Inundated with it. Even little kids are rolling their eyes when someone suggests that another snow day could be in the offing. Most of the adults I know turn off the weather on the nightly news as the weather person gleefully announces another snow storm predicted. Enough we think, enough already.

So in the past few days the temperature has risen and the remaining small clumps of the white stuff has disappeared. The mountainous hills in the shopping center parking lots will no doubt be there until June. But the local turf is peeking through. I walked to my gym appointment this afternoon as it was finally not frigid. And I saw the slender stalks of daffodils pushing up through the ivy in the front yard. The second flower to come out in our area, crocuses being the first. They are one of my favorite flowers, daffodils. They announce Spring is coming. They are optimistic, daffodils are. They come up some years right through the icy crust of winter, defiantly shoving their yellow and white heads towards the weak sunlight. Their frilled crowns in the center seem almost trumpet-like. Make way! They broadcast. Make way for warmer days, more sun, fragrant air! It's hard to be grumpy with these things staring you in the face.

I bought some specialty daffodils from one of those catalog companies a couple of years ago. Some came up, but the squirrels enjoyed them more than I did, digging them up as a special treat I planted just for them. The regular yellow ones planted in the ivy by the people who lived here a few families back are the best. The squirrels either can't get to them because of the ivy or the newly planted ones are just so much easier to acquire, they ignore these. Whatever the reason, I feel so blessed that they come up so abundantly every year. And they are there now, not all the way up, still stretching skyward. But one morning I will look out and they will be there, nodding a benediction to Spring.