In Praise of Daffodils by Julia Jones

Splashes of vivid yellow against a dull fence. Clumps and lines of bright trumpets assertive in an empty garden. Whether or not daffodils have been invited or encouraged, for the last two months they have been all around us. By road sides, pushing their way up through dead leaves and scattered twigs, disregarding litter or neglect, gathered in handfuls for jam jars on window sills. Daffodils are such generous flowers. Even when they’re sold in mean little bundles, elastic-banded together, their flowers tight-shut as if traumatised bring them home, give them just the minimum of light and warmth and water and within hours they will be opening out, sharing their glorious, life-affirming colour.

For I, the lent lily, the Daffadowndilly,

Have heard through the country the call to arouse.

The orchards are ringing with voices a-singing

The praise of my petticoat, praise of my gown.

The children are playing and hark! they are saying

That Daffy-down-dilly is come up to town! 
               
from Flower Fairies of the Spring
by Cicely Mary Barker

Never mind the dear children, if I had a wish it would be that the daffodil fairy would deliver a bunch of a dozen Most Ordinaries to every room and home and sheltered flat of every old person in the country. No need for creamy ruffled doubles, jonquil hybrids with split coronas, narcissistically lovely though they are: just your standard Golden Cheerfulness. Or, alternatively, those dainty, species daffodils planted in tin buckets and sold cheap-as-chips in every garden centre and probably every supermarket across the land. Their flowers may be small but the intensity of their colour is such it will surely penetrate the most cataract-fogged eyesight or dementia-befuddled brain.

The best thing my mother and I have managed over these frequently grim weeks of depression and confusion is to colonise a neglected strip of flower border directly opposite the window of her flat. After ripping out the couch grass and cutting back the dead twigs the first small positive step we took was the planting of two small clumps of daffs. The joy they have given (both of us) cannot be over stated. Even in the time of sundowners when Mum’s brain is exhausted and she sees figures who are not there and she is lost in her own mind, as well as her own space, just sometimes the little yellow fellows have gleamed through the gathering dark. And in the morning there they are again, life-enhancing as the dawn chorus which she can no longer hear.

Our two small clumps have shrivelled now and a flamboyant hydrangea, given by a grandson, is catching Mum’s attention and transmitting joy. I meanwhile have Wordsworth’s poem off by heart and have been reciting it when almost all else fails. And I don’t intend to stop.

I gazed and gazed but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought.

For oft when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon the inward eye

That is the bliss of solitude

And then my heart with pleasure fills

And dances with the daffodils.                    

Daffodils by William Wordsworth

“Ah!” sighs Mum, regular as clockwork when I reach that last line. And she smiles.

Yeovil Hospital CEO, lead dementia nurse, member of town council & me(!)

Last week I was invited to Yeovil Hospital to open their dementia garden, a small sheltered area that is already bringing moments of peace and relief. Let’s have gardens in hospitals and flowers back in wards (except where there are people with respiratory disease). Let’s have colour, art and music for all who are tired and ill. We are also writers and readers so, if we have no flowers to offer, let’s share the beauty of words.