Daffodil Hill
They are everywhere.
Tulips are 2 inches, daffies are 4.
Hiding in clumps, you don't see them at first, but they are there in multitudes.
The first in bloom medal goes to the yellow crocuses.
Only yellow....the purple and whites are lazy apparently.
Perennials are even starting to put on new growth, chief example the terribly named 'sedum'.
While some grow sedum for the blooms in fall, I am a firm fan of the sedums in spring.
When everything else is tall, lanky and colorful, sedum is fresh, bright green and offers structure.
It is invaluable to the early spring garden.
Four years ago, we moved into this house in October. We had no idea what would turn up in spring. While we had surprises here and there throughout the property, the greatest thrill was finding Daffodil Hill. It is a sharp hillside, frequented only by deer and covered with thorny wild rose canes and decades of trees putting down deep roots. In fact, surprisingly enough, the deer keep to this hillside almost exclusively on our property. They go munch apples at the nearby orchard, hop down the deer trail to drink at our creek and then leave the rest of our gardens alone. I have never seen a deer up at the top of our hill, but have seen herds of 15-20 on Daffodil Hill. I am not complaining!
Back to the daffodils though...
Midway through that first spring, we started to notice flashes of yellow up on this thorny hill. At this point, we had been concerned mainly with clearing the terraces of 6 foot tall lawn weeds (no, really!) and eradicating poison ivy from garden beds around the house. This hill was of last concern.
...but then we saw those flashes of light.
One day, I climbed through the brush, halfway up the hill and lined up like soldiers were three rows of perfectly straight, cheery blooming daffodils. Mind you, perfectly straight rows of hundreds of daffodils were hidden under decades of brush. It was like the beginning of a cheesy garden romance novel. Of course, I had to follow these lines through even thornier patches, under giant fallen trees, across half decomposed parts of the forest, all the way to the end of our property. There were literally thousands of miniature daffodils in overgrown clumps. Ignored for many years, these lines kept their shape and the daffodils kept on blooming.
The next year, I decided that the clumps would benefit from dividing and I could use the resource to spread more daffodils around the property. I went through the woods again, this time with clippers to cut back thorny canes and dug up half clumps to transplant, leaving plenty to keep multiplying. At first, I was careful and planned out where to put the daffodils, planting one or two at a time. That is when I realized that I had hundreds of daffodils to plant and about 30 minutes left to plant them before a spring rain. So, the remaining clumps were ripped apart at the roots, tossed unceremoniously into hastily dug holes and covered back up with chunks of sod.
The following spring, those hastily planted daffodils, moved 'in the green', with their leaves laying flat against the sod, perked right up and performed like champs. These are the tough buggers from Daffodil Hill and they will grow just about anywhere.
Enter the cracks:
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| Now you see how rudely I treat these cheery flowers whilst transplanting. |
The 5 cent bags of hyacinths and paperwhites I had forced indoors were also a bit past their prime and starting to rot, so I decided to give them a whirl in the cracks as well. They had certainly already given 5 cents worth of bloom, so there will be no loss if they never come back. If they survive and thrive in the cracks? I will grin a silly grin next spring and bring more buckets of daffies down to plant, plant, plant.
A few of the other hyacinth were chucked into more hastily dug holes and are still in bloom days later:
I do not have confident hope they will be back, but if you look just beyond the purple hyacinth, you might notice small 2 inch clusters of new growth popping up all along the length of that stone wall. The blades are slightly bluish in color, all standing straight to the sky, not a curve in the back of one of them. There are perhaps one hundred. Waking up after a long winter's sleep, refreshed from these early spring rains, and bothered nit by hasty and careless planting last March. This is just one of the many spots to be brightened for many springs thanks to the soliders marching along Daffodill Hill.
Fall of 2014: The Hollow, a hidden driveway with cracks, Daffodil Hill in the very back of the photo and a boy in a red hat.
