Six Square Metres
August 2013
An impudent embrace of possibility
I am rather irritable at the moment. Perhaps it is the election campaign, but I am blaming the daffodils.
The first of the season are sprouting on my pocket handkerchief sundeck – bursts of yellow on sappy stems. It seems almost wrong for them to be so yellow and so confident of the coming of spring. I am quite annoyed with them, which is perverse.
I planted the bulbs very late in autumn, thanks to the endless round of general busyness that prevents me from getting on with the real business of life, such as my garden, in a timely manner. I remember digging in to the pots on the sundeck using a trowel with a wonky handle, and muttering under my breath about Wordsworth.
“I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils”
Not much chance of loneliness around here, with the family shrubbery running riot through the place most evenings.
I remember it was raining, too, but I was determined to get those bulbs in. I was thinking of myself, weary from winter, a few months’ hence.
I know from experience that in early spring the view from my lounge room windows can be depressing. The compost bin is sulking. The silverbeet looks surly. There are no flowers, and in place of vales and hills I have the view of the McDonald’s drive-through with its host of golden arches.
I wanted daffodils as well, to make me feel like a good gardener, a husbander of cheer.
Normally my garden plans are made only in order to go astray. Things don’t grow as I plan, or other things grow faster. But this plan worked. Daffodils are so bloody reliable.
So now the pots on the sundeck are studded with strappy leaves and stems topped with furled yellow buds and, until I cut it a few minutes ago, there was this one arrogant or self-confident bloom ahead of all the rest, with its open-hearted, imprudent embrace of possibility.
‘Hey, look at me,’ it said, seemingly quite unaware of how easily it could be kicked from the ground or shat upon by the pigeons, or gnawed by the rats. It was defying imperfection, and frailty. Damn it.
Daffodils are uniform, and bright as paint. A fitting subject for an Andy Warhol painting, repeating and repeating and repeating. They have none of the quirkiness or individuality of trees or roses or parsnips.
Although there are different types (King Alfred, Hoop Petticoat, and so forth) within each variety they are alike, which is why we plant them in drifts and groups.
Let me describe this one, this pioneer.
The green of the stem is topped with a brown papery sheath, like a reverse dunce’s cap. Then there is the yellow canopy of six petals, each with a shading of green at the base, and the tops slightly curly, like a newspaper just unrolled.
At the centre of these petals is another round of yellow forming a cylinder with a serrated top, and inside the cylinder are the sexual parts of the daffodil, there for all to see, the furry stamen and pistil reaching up and out in the hope of gentle touch.
Daffy daffodils. They open themselves in this way to light and sun and rain, exposing their innards, advertising their vulnerability with a splash of colour in the grey shaded pre-spring garden.
Spring is coming, the daffodils say. Hope springs eternal. And all that. I am going to cut more of the furled yellow buds, put them in a vase, and watch them open in the warmth of my living room.
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