I find that it helps to not try typing in a title first…I’ve always been just lousy at coming up with titles for either poetry or fiction, why should blogging be any different?
this week and last week, I’ve brought daffodils in a vase to work. Not very many: last week, 3 tiny bright yellow narcissus, and this week, two pink and white daffodils, just a little larger.
I didn’t always like bulbs. The flowers are so formal, precise, and from a distance decidedly uniform.
The first winter we lived in our house, I was given a bunch of tulip bulbs by someone who had extra, just for the hell of it. And I planted them that way: just in a dug-up bit of ground near the house, with no particular scheme in mind. In November — or December, when I usually get to it — it seems outlandish to be planting things. Or maybe that’s just the California girl speaking. But come March, they come alive with these sharp pricks of color; on grey days like the ones we’ve had lately, a grassy mound planted with bright red ($10 for 100) tulips grabs you in and won’t let go.
And the daffodils and narcissus, up close, in particular are a story of intense detail, the way the petals crinkle at the edges, the shadow and light. All by themselves they are a composition, striking, and wanting to be painted, photographed, talked about.
I spend my days in a 10 foot square, more or less: the tiniest room possible in an old-school D&D dungeon. Encased in concrete.
So I have houseplants around me, all year long, even if I am a little careless in their maintenance.
Two springs ago, I brought in a vase of tulips as a going-away present for a co-worker. I kept them in my office for a while, first, and now I know I need to do that, every year. At this time of year, there’s not _that_ much light in the evening, though that will change in a week; not much time in the garden, except on the weekend, and it’s raining, or I have other work to do, or something.
So I have daffodils, in a vase, where I can look at them all the time; the same way I have a photograph of C, looking stern and stylish at LW’s wedding, with a tiny love note tucked in its corner. Something to remind me of the outside.