A Legacy of Bulbs
Our farm is home to I don’t know how many daffodils, they were first planted in the 1940’s when my mother-in-law bought the remaining inventory of a down on his luck bulb merchant, who is rumored to have also been a relative. So, maybe the original plan was to help out a friend, but the result was a dump truck full of bulbs.
I managed to pick up the rest of the story from the guy who was farm manager at the time. This was deep country and he freely admits he did not know exactly what the bulbs could be good for. All he knew for sure was that he had been shown where and was now expected to plant them. My mother-in law-had also given him a couple of hand bulb planters, the type that plug a neat little hole for one bulb at a time.
It is true that my mother-in-law did have extensive daffodil beds in her home yard, where she raised show quality flowers for competition. And it is also true she was a dutiful gardener and spent many hours toiling over her many bulbs. But some how the difference in quantity between her beds and a real dump truck packed full escaped her. I guess it would not be far from having to guess how many individual pieces of gravel where in that truck. Ingenuity goes hand in hand with farming, and the hand planters were replaced with a tractor and disc. When the beds were prepared, the dump truck drove down the middle and two guys shoveled bulbs, spacing them by kind launching them over the truck bed. Followed by a chain link drag, not a bulb was showing above ground; mission accomplished?
I asked about the part where the neck of the bulb was supposed to point up. And he calmly said” I let them sort that part out themselves”. Well, they must have because 65 yrs later, we live in a sea of daffodils each spring. They have spread to all the neighboring farms by sharing the bounty. Even now each spring when the daffodils have done their thing, every gardener has some extras from dividing the clumps, which multiply quickly.
The older people call them Jonquils whether they are or not, none of them ever heard of a daffodil. But from one good deed many years ago, everyone who visits our little corner of the world is treated to vistas of daffodils each spring. And with winter approaching fast and early, we will soon be waiting for that beacon of spring, the daffodil.
