Daffodils

I have been thinking a fair bit about daffodils recently.  A couple of weeks ago, I bought some field daffodils to bring home and put in a vase as a surprise for Mark because they are his favorite flower.  They opened up gorgeously, but perhaps even more beautiful than their appearance was their fragrance which took me back to my childhood, to my grandparent's farm.

My Grandfather Broom was a fruit farmer in southern Illinois.  At some point back in the 30's or 40's, he had decided to plant daffodils as a field cash crop.  Being only a mile from the Illinois Central Railroad, he could easily ship flowers to Chicago, so he had dedicated a field just east of his peach packing shed to daffodils.

Some of the happiest memories of my childhood were of time spent on my grandparents' farm, pictured below years after they had both died.

The peach packing shed was east of the house, as is shown in this picture taken of me, my siblings and my grandparents in the early 60's.  (I'm the cute one in front of my grandmother.)  The packing shed, which was quite a large building, about the size of two barns placed together, is visible behind my grandparents.

Here is another picture, taken in the fall of 1963, of me and some of my siblings and cousins.  I'm the one in the white shirt (no, I wasn't a Mormon then) in front.  In the background can be seen the packing shed, and beyond that, a row of trees.  The daffodil field was between the packing shed and those trees.

What is amazing to me is that I can remember precisely what that daffodil field looked like and what it smelled like when the daffodils were in bloom.  Many of the bulbs had ceased producing by then, and my grandfather no longer harvested them.  I don't have any pictures of that field, but the lead photo to this post, borrowed from another website, reminded me somewhat of what the field looked like. (Part of what I remember is the intense green of spring, as depicted in the lead photo.) I enjoyed playing in that field and picking daffodils.

I also have very vivid memories, from when I was about 6 or 7, of playing in that old peach packing shed, which had long since fell into disuse.  That I can remember that, even down to the smell of the shed, what was in there, even how the light fell through the small windows - along with the memories of the daffodil field - amazes me. 

Why am I writing about this?  I'm not really sure, except perhaps to express wonder at how daffodils have come back into my life now through Mark.  These simple but beautiful flowers that hold such tender memories of my childhood represent just one of a number of strands of my past life that I seem to have picked up and woven back into who I am here and now.  I'm grateful for that.