You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Thursday

After my mother died, I combed the local stores (Meijer, Lowes, Walmart, Andy's Garden Center, our local florist, to find daffodils and other spring flowering plants for her memorial.  The season was Easter-y and the pickings were a bit slim.  I succeeded, however, and filled the suite in the funeral home with viburnum, hyacinth, lilies, pansies and daffodils.  As our guests left, I gifted each a blooming bulb so they might plant it in their garden and remember her each spring.  I kept the viburnum and a few of the daffodils and created a bed in the backyard which she could have looked down upon from her bedroom window.  The last two years have been decidedly disappointing with the rectangle looking mostly grave-like (thank you to Marianna for that apt descriptor) with mostly dirt and very, very few plants.  I buy plants.  Rabbits eat plants.  I even considered that the local groundhog might have been salading in my bed.

Nobody touches the daffodils, however, and so each spring I have purchased a few new pots of blooming sunshine, enjoyed them in the house then added them to her bed.  This year, I found this beautiful, multilayered specimen.  It was a lovely pale yellow... but I thought it was even more striking in black and white.

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

William Wadworth Longfellow

Daffodil, April 2026