Uncaging the Bas
It’s a grey-again Sunday
after mere hours of honeyed sun,
two weeks of rain and wind,
three sudden squalls of snow.
Donning my long, grey coat,
taking up my shears,
I see what is emerging
and wish to help it grow.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning,
known at home as “Ba”,
had to escape her girlhood
in foggy London,
where she slept like
Sleeping Beauty,
to flower fully
in sun-kissed Italy.
You, tiny daffodils,
you bring her name each year
up from the winter snow,
and I must cut away
these dead stalks holding you
down, help you proclaim
openly, openly
your fragments of sun.
Leslie Schultz
Yesterday was the first day I have been able to be out in the garden. It has been very cool here, though the grass is green and the scilla are ahead of schedule. I could see that the little daffodils are almost ready to bloom but they were overshadowed by the dried walnut leaves and the stalks of last season’s cone flowers. So I spent a few moments uncovering them–and I am hoping hard they don’t get hit by new snow.
If all goes well, they will bloom exuberantly, as in past years!
Until tomorrow!
Leslie
Dear Sally,
Yes! These are the ones you sent a few years ago. We did have a little more snow this morning, but it is gone now. I think the daffodils will come through just fine.
Daffodils: the gift that keeps on giving! Thanks, again, Sally. Love, Leslie
Dear Leslie,
Just home from a day in flowers! Are these daffs from the Elizabeth Barrett Browning daffodil bulbs that I gave you one year for your birthday?
Daffodils have been up out here in New England, as you know, for weeks. They have had to withstand the freezing cold, and have fared well. I noticed this morning on my drive to work how perky they were, and happy and proud. I thought about Wordsworth then– imagining he and Dorothy seeing the daffodils on their walks near Dove Cottage, and began to wonder how those daffodils arrived by themselves (without bulb planters like yourself, that is).
Love, Sally