Pink Daffodil

It was April of 2004, and I was house hunting. When I first saw my house, the yard was just loaded with spring blooms: yellow daffodils, pink and purple azaleas, and rhododendrons with blooms as bright pink as a girl's sixteenth birthday cake and as big around as dinner plates. Fat, happy bees bumbled everywhere.

My green thumb thwarted for so many years by living in rented properties, some without yards - and envisioning (at last!) a spring yard blooming with a glorious profusion of beautiful bulbs - I bought the house and set about planting tulips. In fact, I ordered and planted hundreds of them, in every shade of the rainbow. Tulips with names like rembrandt, purple prince, parrot, pink fountain, angelique, don camillo, rococo, rai, double six, pink fringe, and apple blossom.

Alas, the tulips - selected with great care, and planted on beautiful, crisp October days, with joy and great tenderness - did not stay. They came up a few times, then faded. This spring, I am lucky if I have a dozen or two dozen tulips coming up, after planting (and spending) hundreds.

The yard's edges, however, were just replete with yellow daffodils. They came up in clumps: along trees, on top of stumps, behind rocks, beneath piles of leaves. Nothing could stop them! Disappointed with my lackluster tulip experiences, I decided instead to focus on increasing my holdings of daffodils.

I remember the first time, a few years ago, that I heard of pink daffodils. Yes, I loved daffodils, bright and cheerful harbingers of spring, the gift of yellow sunshine brought indoors by the armful. But pink? I ordered a few different kinds of pink ones through the mail; then I saw some in a local store, and bought even more; and I planted them along the edges of the yard.

As it turns out, the color isn't exactly pink: maybe more of a sunrise or a sunset, in shades of peach and apricot. The names for them are as colorful as their blooms: spring pride, narcissus pink charm. They are hardy and predictable: they come back every year, and they bloom for several weeks.

You know, maybe I wasn't meant to own tulips. And so perhaps I'll cast my lot with Wordsworth. These blooms may be sunset pink rather than golden, but I'll happily join with him - and them - in the awesome dance that is spring.

"And then my heart with pleasure fills
And dances with the daffodils."
- William Wordsworth