March is giving us the cruel jerk-around, as usual. Yesterday’s high was 80 degrees, but by bedtime the temperature had fallen to 40, with a cold rain setting in. I don’t mind. It can only be winter’s last gasp at this point, and the rain will help things grow. The shrubs in our back garden already have tiny green leaves, no bigger than a squirrel’s ear. From a distance they look like a veil of sheer green tulle wrapping the framework of branches.
While it was still warm yesterday I picked the bouquet of daffodils you see here. These flowers are always the first to bloom in the very early spring. The cups are all ruffled and doubled, with petals in every shade of gold and green. When Mark and I moved in they were the only things blooming in the long-neglected garden, and I think they must be almost as old as our house. The house was built in 1948, so I imagine these hardy bulbs have bloomed every year for more than fifty years. I bless whoever it was that left them for me.
At Manassas Battlefield I have seen the ruins of old farmsteads that date from the mid-nineteenth century. The farmhouses are long gone, but around the crumbling foundations you can see masses of daffodils that still bring their brightness in thick rows thanks to gardeners who are long gone. Those flowers look exactly like mine, with crazy mismatched petals that lack any distinctive cup. I wonder if they were they always that way or whether they gradually took on that form over the decades. Perhaps as the bulbs crowded in upon one another in the untended garden the petals grew wild as a result.
Sometimes I wonder what my own garden will look like in another fifty years. After I leave it, will anything remain? Some of my favorite plants are very long lived. Peonies can live for many decades without much attention, and I have dozens of them. I’ve planted hardy roses that climb over the arbor above my patio. How long will they keep climbing? And I’ve added to the old wild daffodils that were here when I arrived. Now there are Jack Snipes and Thalias, Tête-à -têtes and King Alfred daffodils all over my garden. Will some future gardener wonder who planted them and thank me? I hope so.
