Patient Daffodils

by C Barkley
(Portland, TN)

My husband's mother has farm land in rural Tennessee that belonged to her Grandparents. There is not a lot out there but an old barn an outhouse and acres and acres of beautiful wildflowers.

A couple of years ago my husband and I took a Sunday afternoon road trip with his parents up to the farm to look at it- it was so beautiful! We had a shovel and boxes in the trunk so we could take some of the beautiful daffodils back with us. We started out hiking next to the creek and the beautiful yellow flowers were everywhere!

My husband had brought the shovel so we dug deep down and pulled up hundreds of bulbs! We took the bulbs and left them in the garage for a few weeks- daffodils are some of the earliest flowers to come up and it was still too cold to plant when we got back.

A few weeks later I pulled the bulbs out of the garage and laided them out for planting. That Spring I had a beautiful flower garden but no daffodils- the next Spring the daffodils stems came up and were very strong and green but no blooms.

My husband's job relocated us the following year, and we were forced to rent out our house. That late February my in-laws called and said they had drove by our house just to check on the renters and in the front of the house were my beautiful daffodils!

They couldn't believe how many of them were from just the few bulbs I had planted and how healthy and gorgeous they looked! It took two complete seasons for the bulbs to come in but apparently it was worth the wait!

Flower Bulbs on eBay