OPINION: A daffodil by any other name

And yes, I love it in all its forms and varieties, including the jonquil and the buttercup, though to me they are all still “daffodils.”

One of the reasons I love them is that they begin to bloom sometime around my March birthday, but the main reason is that they are one of the first promises of spring, pushing their brave little tops through the cold ground when temps remain below freezing, unfurling their soft yellow flowers on those cold sunny days, as if to say “winter won’t last forever.”

Charles and the kids usually present me with a bouquet of them for my birthday, and they keep for a long time on my kitchen table. It’s nice to have them to look at when the cold winds blow and the dark rainy days continue to come around.

Charles planted a hundred or so bulbs in our yard after we first moved into the home we live in now, and there is one little patch by the garage that is usually the first to push its way up through the ground, if not the first patch to bloom. I always watch for them and sometimes they appear as early as the first week or so of January. Not surprisingly, they were a little late coming up this year. Charles just pointed them out to me last week. There they are though they’re not ready to bloom yet, but soon. Then they’ll be all along the road, particularly where there is less shade than around my house, blooming in all their yellow sunny brilliance, standing up to the cold weather to proclaim that better, warmer days are ahead.

I look forward to that. And like most of us, I look forward to spring, but I don’t look forward to summer when it gets too hot to almost breathe on some days.

I have enjoyed the cooler, even cold weather this year, and the snow has been beautiful, causing us all to slow down a little bit. But I’m ready now, ready for some warm breezes, the leaves to sprout, the flowers like the forsythia, aka “yellow bells,” that follow the daffodils, to bloom.

It’ll be fun to see the delicate, yet hardy, little hummingbirds return from their long journeys to feed at our feeders again and to watch all the new life that abounds during April and May. My dogs and cats will frolic in the backyard like little puppies and kittens, and hopefully even our old lab Buddy will see another spring and be able to enjoy the warm sunshine on his sweet face.

Though none of us like to think of it, every spring we see is one less we have on this earth. But the flip side of that is that it should make us all take the time to take it all in.

For now, we may face another snowstorm (or two) since Easter is so late this year (my mama always said don’t trust spring weather until after Easter), but we have only to look to the sprouting daffodils to see that “this too shall pass” and that spring is on the way.

Margie Richards is a reporter and office manager for The Madison County Journal.