Daffodil Silver

I have a favorite garden writer – well, actually I have two – but today we’ll stick with the inimitable Beverley Nichols: British, highly opinionated, passionate about all things horticultural, and a wonderful writer:

As we all know, the only way to plant daffodils is to pile them on to a tray, and then to run out into the orchard and hurl the tray into the air; planting them exactly where they fall. There may be other, less orthodox methods;  if so they should be spurned. The tray, the ecstatic gesture — that is the only sure road to success.

I like to imagine that long ago somebody who lived at Rosedon did exactly that.

Spring brings something special to the woods leading up to the house from the road. Daffodils, hundreds of them, have naturalized. The cheerful little clumps have no rhyme or reason, really, as to where they appear and are all the better for it.

As we come up our driveway, it is a sure sign of spring when those daffodils start nodding their bright yellow heads at us from deep within the woods.

I was ambitious in the early years of our Barn stewardship and dug out large clumps to have near the house. But now I sort of like them just where they are.  The daffodil is a hardy heirloom plant that survives whatever nature throws at it including the dreaded deer. Deer, voles, and squirrels don’t like them. Just another reason to love the humble daffodil.

Yes, that’s my version of how these daffodils got here. Somebody went out with bulbs — on a silver tray, of course — and hurled them into the woods.  And I thank them.

I know just how he feels!