Last week, in the early morning, daffodils were standing 4 inches tall, topped with buds. The sun came out, and by afternoon the daffodils were in full bloom. From the kitchen table I could see into the woods where singular daffodils exploded. Down by the spillway of the lake, just past the wooden bridge, daffodils were blooming. You have to wonder how daffodils came to be there when certainly no one planted daffodils in the woods or in the spillway. I believe the wood’s daffodils came with the removal of dirt when the sunroom was added. Hardy little beauties they are. The ones by the spillway must have been picked up by torrential rains and deposited in the spillway. And yet they bloom whether sunlight or none, water or none, tumbled over rocks and downhill and still they bloom. We should all be so hardy as a daffodil.
And how different each one seems to be. One variety had an inner trumpet of bright orange with surrounding petals of pale yellow. Most were a yellow as pale as butter. Then there were the tiny bright yellow ones that looked like miniatures. It seemed unbelievable that daffodils were blooming in early February. It brightens an otherwise dreary day to have bouquets of daffodils on the kitchen table.
Norman Winter’s “Mississippi Gardener’s Guide” says daffodils are but another name for narcissus (a species), as are the names jonquil and paperwhites. I’ve heard some folks call daffodils buttercups and buttercups primrose. It can all get very confusing, but surely anyone would call them beautiful in February.
Winter’s guide says daffodils are good for fragrance and putting in vases and that the species name “Narcissus came from the mythological Greek youth who fell in love with his reflection in a pool of water and was turned into a flower.” A daffodil’s reflection would be easy to fall in love with.
In Starkville along Louisville Street, there was a very large Japanese magnolia in full bloom and I have heard report of others. Again, Winter’s guide shares another interesting tidbit. Seems the magnolia was named for Pierre Magnol (1638-1715), a French botanist. Sam saw a couple of Bradford pears that were struggling to bloom, like us, they too must be so confused with this odd weather.
At the intersection of Lowndes County’s Shaeffer’s Chapel Road and Kyle Road, the pink flowers of flowering quince, with a side of white spiraea, are on full display. Here and there and including in my own yard are sprigs of yellow forsythia. I confess early on I brought in a few stems of forsythia and forced them into blooming.
With the arrangement of daffodils and forsythia I added a few branches of loropetalum, also called Chinese fringe flower. Loropetalum can grow as large as a tree if you don’t prune it, sometimes reaching 20 to 30 feet.
Believe it or not daylight savings time is still a month away, and Easter is more than two. How often is it you can pick fresh flowers for St. Valentines Day?
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