Daffodils

morgan in ar · Mar 16, 2020

Whenever I am driving through the country and see daffodils out in the middle of a pasture, woods, or even right on the edge of the road, it makes me think. Usually that means that there was a home there. Lots of times, there is nothing else left of the place. Sometimes, the flowers still come up in the outline of a house or a walkway. It makes me think about the people that put the flowers there. That there was once life there, a homestead. Probably with children, a garden, hen house, smoke house, barn, and an outhouse. Now, nothing left but the daffodils every spring. The homesteaders put the flowers out so that they would have something to look forward to when Winter was waning. Maybe nobody left who remembers these people, or maybe just their names, but the flowers come back every year. Just like Spring does. Undaunted by time, pretty neat legacy, if you think about it. I should plant some at my place.

Janicholson · Mar 16, 2020

nice observation! The principal at my grade school had 4 inches of asphalt put over a flower bed. The tulips came right through the asphalt like it wasn't there. Nice. Jim

Dave H (MI) · Mar 16, 2020

Well, I hate to burst your nostalgia bubble, but I scattered daff's all over our place. Anywhere they would not get tilled in. Never been a house in any of the places I put them. I have seen what you are talking about though. Out in the middle of nothing and you see flowers outlining where a house once was.

MtMan · Mar 16, 2020

The town that I live near has them growing for about a mile or so along the road leading out of town. An older gentlemen worked at a cemetery and when folks left flower pots at the graves in the fall. He would save all of the daffodils and jonquils and planted them along the road. He's gone for a few years now, but each spring you are able to see them and it reminds you of how he made a difference in this world.

JMOR · Mar 16, 2020

The place I go by regularly has many around the one time house and the still standing brick fireplace/chimney. I have a lot myself, but unlike those totally unattended which bloom nicely, mine hardly flowered at all for the last few years....just nice green plants!?

Charlie M · Mar 16, 2020

I see them a lot where people tossed them and they grew again. They will root anywhere they hit the ground.

SweetFeet · Mar 16, 2020

Excellent post, Morgan.

I ponder those very same things (the stories of the people from the past), whenever I am permitted to take photos on an old abandoned building site or even while wandering through in junkyards.

Bob N.Y. · Mar 16, 2020

In this part of the world the site of long gone farmsteads are often marked by lilac bushes.

SkipperII · Mar 16, 2020

We have a few sections of Highway 20 that have them popping up because the soil came from old bulb farms.

Jim in NC · Mar 16, 2020

I sincerely loved your post. We are living it. We are fifth generation owners of farms owned by both sets of my grandparents. Both homesites remain in our family and the yards and adjacent woods are filled with scattered clusters of daffodils, or buttercups as we call them. We live in the house in which my dad, grandpa, and great grandpa resided. My daughter and family live on the other farm in a home where I grew up which was built by my parents.

FBH44 · Mar 16, 2020

We still own the old home place, and my grandma's flower beds still bring up the daffodils every spring. It's out by the highway, in an odd shape, under the old catalpa tree, and I always wonder how she did it, what she had in mind. Never know. I lime them, add some gypsum, occasionally fertilize them.

Blueford4000 · Mar 16, 2020

I always saw them in northwest TN.

What other states are they in?

Steve@Advance · Mar 16, 2020

Good observation!

The area I live is rapidly growing, lots of old houses being taken down, making way for businesses.

Everything pretty much gets paved, so not much chance for daffodils to make it.

I do find it frustrating that I can drive by a place for years, then one day it's all gone, and I can't for the life of me remember what was there!

sms · Mar 17, 2020

Not far from home there is a NYC reservoir. A couple towns and many farms were taken in the watershed. For many years we have gone to those old abandoned farms picked apples from the orchards, blueberries in the brush growing in old pastures. Some places the flowers still grow and the occaisional raspberry patch and even asparagus and rubarb in one place. I knew people born in those towns or on those farms and many that worked to build the dams, but most are gone now.

jacksun65 · Mar 17, 2020

I remember as a kid going to an old homestead, the house falling down most everything else gone. The farmer was going to turn it into field said we could have anything. I remember digging up lilacs, snow ball bushes and daffodils, lots of other flower bulbs and bushes. My mother used them around our new house at the time. I always wondered all the care and time someone took to plant all those flowers.

Daffodils

morgan in ar

Member

Janicholson

Well-known Member

Dave H (MI)

Well-known Member

MtMan

Member

JMOR

Well-known Member

Charlie M

Well-known Member

SweetFeet

Well-known Member

Bob N.Y.

Well-known Member

SkipperII

Well-known Member

Jim in NC

Well-known Member

FBH44

Well-known Member

Blueford4000

Member

Steve@Advance

Well-known Member

sms

Well-known Member

jacksun65

Well-known Member

Similar threads