They're Almost Here...

... the daffodils! (Or, Jonquilles if you are French.) Daffodils are not only one of my favorite flowers, they also happen to be my birth flower. I love how they come up, all goofy and swaying, with their big yellow noses sticking out like Dodo birds.* (See image below.)

*Dodo Bird

Daffodils are funny little flowers; they are among the first to sprout in early spring along with crocus bulbs and tulips. In order to withstand the harsh winds of March they must be both strong and flexible. In fact, their strength lies in their ability to bend with the wind. They are the harbingers of spring, the mighty and triumphant trail blazers and yet they are made of such delicate fabric, wilting so soon after a brave bloom, their petals turning into crisp, copper-colored gossamer sheaths before you can even notice their subtle arrival, poking out here and there among the brown grey end of winter milieu. Below is a little note I wrote in my iPhone this time last year about the daffodils and their gorgeously stunning cousins, the tulips.

When you spot your first poker-hot red and stop-light yellow tulips of the season. Standing in a warm beam of a march sun, arrested in the sight of it. Crisp cool air biting at your arms, the smell of something stirring in the soil. The backdrop around you is covered in dusty browns and mud colored things with the occasional spots of soft yellows, dots of violet and baby pink puffs on thin grey branches. This brown, grey world seems to hide a secret. The browness, the bark on trees, the dead leaves hanging like bats in their skins are - in a certain sunlight - suddenly awash in watercolor pale pinks and muted purples. What do they know in their sleeping states? You can almost smell the world beginning to patch itself back again, can almost see the seedlings sprouting under the wet dirt. Little daffodils crooning their necks over a landscape of dead things. They know. They know about the will to live. About the will to love. The will to start over and over and over again and try something new each time. They never not bloom because they die everytime. They bloom anyway. They grow and live and give anyway. They love anyway. The daffodils never say to themselves "but why bloom? We died the last six million times? Why bother?" Bloom anyway. (And do Bloom in any way you choose, and any where that you are planted. )