March 2026 Slice of Life, No. 4
We took a back country drive. Bright yellow daffodils were blooming–those beside houses and driveways and those seemingly out of place.
Did you know that daffodils don’t grow wild in woods or fields? When your see daffodils in a woods, in the middle of a field, or beside a road, know that they mark human history. Someone years ago planted them at the edge of a garden, along a fence, beside a walk and drive, near a house or barn.
Daffodils are planted by human hands, and daffodils that seem out of place are there because someone once lived and cared.
The people have left; their homestead has crumbled; their barn has collapsed. Walkways and drives are overgrown. Their garden is a ghost. But each spring, year after year, the daffodils bloom even though no one any longer cares.
If daffodils could talk, I’d ask them,
Who planted you? What were they like?
What was their house like?
Was there a barn or a chicken coop?
Did they have children who romped on a lawn where weeds now grow?
Daffodils are signposts that remind us someone lived. When you see daffodils clustered in the middle of nowhere, seemingly out of place, take a reverent moment. They are keeping history alive, for someone once called that place home.
Literature Connections
Of course, I cannot write of daffodils without thinking of William Wordsworth’s “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud.”
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
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.
. . .
Just a side note: I think it is significant that Wordsworth personifies daffodils, flowers planted only by human hands.
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