The First Daffodil

You might imagine that I’d watch for the first daffodil of the season with a particular passion, and you’d be right.

I watch the first green shoots coming up, which this year was in mid January. I watch as the slightly rounded bunch of yellow daffodil petals appear, this year in early February.

And I watch as that yellow swelling gradually expands into a tightly bound collection of petals.

Over the next day is the big reveal when the petals pull back to display the trumpet (or crown or corona) and you finally get to see the daffodil in its full glory.

All that being said, you might also be able to imagine my disappointment when, after watching this one particular flower develop over the course of several weeks — this first daffodil (in my yard) of 2017 — to find it on the big reveal day fallen over with a crimp halfway down the stem.

Perhaps the weight of the flower was too much for the stem, or maybe one of the resident squirrels knocked it over.

Either way, it was irreparably bent, and though I tried propping it up on a flower pot, it just wasn’t going to stay upright.

Enter the kitchen shears and something I don’t really like to do ever since I started anthropomorphizing daffodils with human emotions: cutting the daffodil and bringing it inside.

Ultimately, bringing this flower inside yesterday has allowed me to spend more time near it, moving it from one place to the next, and this morning into a nice sunny spot as I’m having ricotta pancakes for brunch.

I know, this floral fascination is probably a sickness in some corners, but for me it’s the First Daffodil of the Year, and that’s a special thing.

The fact that so many daffodils in Asheville have bloomed so early in the year (mid February rather than mid March) is a topic for another day, and also will make for a good piece of porcelain in which one daffodil says to another “Is it just me or are we waking up earlier and earlier every year?”