These daffodils came from an old homestead. I dug them up about 35 years ago from the spot where someone's house once stood, and who knows how long ago they were there. The house had been gone for at least 100 years, the neighbors said.
I've moved the flowers once since I first planted them. They come up every year. The time they stay in bloom depends on the weather, but they always bloom.
They're a little speck of sunshine on the edge of the tree line at my house.
I love them.
In 2009, I purchased some dying mums from Home Depot. They were yellow. They didn't really look like mums to me, but I thought they were worth the 50 cents or whatever I paid for them.
I planted them in my whiskey barrel in my rose bed.
I especially did not expect them to be around 14 years later.
Nor did I expect them to change color.
But here they are in all their glory today!
Obviously, they are no longer yellow. Over the years they have gone from yellow to purple to this deep maroon.
Dandelions are flowering plants that belong to the family Asteraceae. They are native to Eurasia and North America but have been introduced to other parts of the world. They have many uses as food, medicine, and ornamental plants. (Bing AI)
The white flower I think many people would call a daisy, but it's actually fleabane. Fleabane belongs to the aster family. Some of it is native to North America and some is not. The flowers bloom from spring to fall and utilize a variety of habitats. Fleabane can be cooked as greens and is used to treat various ailments. (Bing AI)
One of my most hurtful memories involves dandelions. When I was quite small, I thought them beautiful, and I picked a handful to take to my mother. She immediately declared it a weed and threw them in the trash. I don't recall ever picking another flower for my mother again.
I still find dandelions beautiful. They're so happy looking, with their yellow color, and then they are fun when they've gone to seed. One hardy blow upon them and the seeds fly through the sky like magic.
The redbud tree really makes spring pop around here. That brilliant pink color is everywhere, and it is a delight to see it. I love looking up through a tree at the pink with a blue sky.
I looked outside yesterday and noticed a little color had crept into the world of the winter:
It is looking like Spring will be here before we know it.
It's still a pretty ground cover, but I will leave it at the edge of the woods and not move it up near the house.
*At least, I think it's periwinkle.
When we built this house, we put the rear where the front should be. Back then, when you built a house on top of a hill, you put the front of the house toward the view.
However, we drive up to the back of the house, and everyone comes in the back doors. I don't think anyone has ever come through my front door. There are no steps leading to it, and no real reason to walk around there.
In fact, the only time I know of anyone using the front door, or the small porch there, was one year when the UPS man left a package there during bad weather when no one was home, and I didn't find it for three months.
The back part of the house is where the heat pump is, and we've always kept a flower bed around the heat pump. I started out with perennials, but soon switched to roses only. My husband's grandmother was a prize rose grower, and she gave me starter plants.
The roses never did as well as I wanted. The ground here is Virginia clay, and that doesn't grow things well. Mulch and flower food helped, but since the roses were never strong to start with, they easily caught disease and were home to aphids and Japanese beetles (although come to think of it, I haven't seen Japanese beetles in some time. Maybe the stink bugs ate them.)
Of course, I am older now, and I've some health problems, so weeding and keeping up with this little plot had become something I wasn't doing as well as I wanted.
Monday, the last of Grandma's roses went to the compost pile. My husband had decided he wanted something that looked better there.
It does look better, and once I buy some flower baskets there will be flowers. Also, there are mums in the old whisky barrel.
Of course, all of this could have been avoided if we'd reversed the house to begin with, so that the heat pump was not by the driveway, main entrance, and patio.
Live and learn.
They are looking a bit worse for wear, but the daffodils appear to have survived the weekend's cold snap and light coating of snow. I love catching glimpses of yellow and knowing it's a daffodil reaching up toward the sky.
Around these parts, we've always called these things rock lilies, but they're actually yucca plants, also known as Adam's Needles. These are about 34 years old or older, as we dug them up from my parents' farm where they were growing alongside the road for no apparent reason.
My friend who grew up in the Shenandoah Valley called the century plants, which I'd never heard.
Each region names things a little differently sometime. As we become a homogenized planet, I glory in localisms like this one. It helps keep things unique.
