Daffodils
29 March 1999
Coastal Georgia's climate
is perfect for the flowers that bloom in the spring ... tra la!
And it's equally fine for trees shedding their leaves while modestly
draping their bare branches with Spanish moss.
I'm
no gardener. I have a garden, but I'm no gardener. And I do join
those who find more art and poetry in a garden than anywhere else.
I just don't think I have to be up to my elbows in manure to find
perfection in a rose. Spare as it is, there's nothing secret about
my garden; it's out there for all to see.
I'm
actually reading up on garden art -- pieces of stone, sculpted
or not, to nestle 'mid the blossoms, attracting eyes of passersby
away from the weeds. It's not that I hate weeding a garden, it's
just that I think weeds are pretty. I've had too many limp dandelions
sitting in jelly glasses on kitchen window sills not to believe
they are beautiful.
Today
I can see azaleas from every window. There are early blooming
azaleas, blooming azaleas, and late-blooming azaleas. That pretty
much covers the year. And, although azaleas of every color are
abundant here, they are not the only blossoms in this lovely place
in the sun.
Conditions
are right for everything from hibiscus and oleander to banana
and lemon trees. When conditions are not right -- and that happens,
as with El Nino -- well, they might have a bad year. It is never
a very bad year, just less spectacularly beautiful than usual.
Consider
the daffodil! Wordsworth wrote of "the host of golden daffodils,"
but I write of just one. If I could put my mind into the heart
of one lone daffodil, I know my passion would come not from blooming
year 'round in colorful glory, but from struggling to exist at
all.
Only
by forcing slender shoots through cold, unfriendly ground topped
with ice, often then dusted with snow, does the lone daffodil
reach the warmth of the beckoning sun. I don't even know which
end of a bulb to plant downward, yet the bulb knows which way
to go up and out and then follow a natural course.
Somehow,
this is analogous to my knowing nothing about babies but following
a natural course. During my baby interlude, my garden consisted
of muddy sneakers kicked off behind sweating kids running inside
to blurt: "Ya got milk?"
Nothing
grew there except crabgrass, kids and kittens, boys and bats and
balls. Oh, and sometimes radishes. (Only the hearty survived,
girls having peeked daily to see if a tell-tale purple root made
it edible.)
Not
all snowbanks are magic carpets to tempt my lone daffodil. Often
the shoot would appear through sooty, ice-crusted patches next
to the driveway. The yellow flower would follow in a few days
and before I could celebrate its wonder, a small hand would clutch
it stemless, run into the kitchen where I would put it in water.
No jelly glass this time; it would float in a brandy-snifter,
facing the beckoning winter sun streaming over my windowsill.
As
a child I saw daffodils blooming in sidewalk cracks. What a triumph!
"Move over asphalt, this is my jungle."
One
of the little radish-pickers now lives in Phoenix where her front
yard consists of pebbles and a lone cactus. Up and down the street,
owners of similar homes try to grow grass. They import seeded
sod from Michigan or Massachusetts, to have again what they left
behind in favor of greener grasses. It doesn't work. Grass doesn't
grow in the desert. It is out of its element.
Here
I am now in the land of the same sun that beckons daffodils, and
I suppose I've also come to full flower. But, if all I'm supposed
to do is bask, well, I may also be out of my element, but I'm
not out of my mind. I can admire the daffodil for its struggle
and it's spectacular survival, but, as for me, I haven't peaked
yet.
Robert
Browning said it better: "Man's reach should exceed his grasp,
or what's a Heaven for?"
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