Fact: My favorite color is yellow, and my favorite flowers are accordingly daffodils.
I get inordinately excited every spring when “daffodil season” arrives (usually right around my birthday, which is utterly serendipitous in every way, because who doesn’t love when timing works out perfectly like that?). It doesn’t matter where I am…college dorm room, flat in London, windowless busy season audit room, or any of my apartments thus far…I buy several dozen daffodils and fill every container I can find with them. They’re so cheerful! And they smell so fresh and green and springlike.
I’m a big fan of the “grow your own daffodils,” too. They’re tiny and adorable and basically foolproof. Whether I can keep them alive or not, however, is totally a different story.
One of the best days I’ve ever had was when I studied abroad in London in the spring of 2010 and our program offered a day trip to Oxford. My friends and I stumbled into the Oxford Botanic Gardens and discovered field upon open field of daffodils in bloom, right along the riverbank. We parked ourselves there for lunch al fresco and spent several blissful hours watching the punters on the river, listening to the Beatles (because, duh, let’s do every clichéd British thing ever), and admiring (or in my case, freaking out over) the flowers.
Sometimes I wish I loved the kind of flowers that are more readily available year-round—daisies, roses, I don’t know…but then daffodil season rolls around again and I fall in love, every year, without fail. I have to beg to disagree with Kathleen Kelly of “You’ve Got Mail” fame…daisies aren’t the friendliest flower. In my opinion, it’s daffodils, all the way.
