Daffodils

Dora's field, Rydal. photo: Tony Richards

'....all at once I saw a crowd
A host of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze '

From a Georgian Farmhouse- 3



‘I fancy a drift of daffodils at the near end of the orchard’, said Mum.

Her friend Margaret, who ran the Bellgarth Nurseries in Carlise gave her a large selection of daffodil and narcissus bulbs.


‘I’ll get Old Ernie to plant them on Saturday,’ said Mum (There were two Ernies - Ernie the Blacksmith, and Old Ernie who came to do the garden.)


Old Ernie was a gardener of the ‘Municipal’ type; he liked things ‘just so’. Mum’s front borders were planted with neat and even rows of alternating allysum and lobelia, with scarlet salvias lined up behind them. Patriotic and oh so formal.


‘Mmm…something a bit less...well... regimented would be nice,’ murmured Mum. But Old Ernie was in charge.


Mum explained what she wanted for the daffs, and Old Ernie planted them.




‘Oh, no!’ said Mum when the green blades pushed through the orchard grass in the Spring. ‘O, no! Just look at my daffs,’

There they stood, in three immaculately straight lines along the edge of the orchard lawn - like serried ranks of soldiers on parade.

It took Mum several years of surreptitious planting to soften the rows of Old Ernie’s planting scheme. And the result was never quite the ‘drift’ that she had envisaged - but the flowers were pretty all the same.

‘and then my heart with pleasure fills
And dances with the daffodils’
Wordsworth.