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I believe if I was to take them daffydils back to Aunt Matilda's and plant 'em in the border where they used to grow, alongside o' the sage and lavender and thyme, that they'd go to bloomin' again jest like they used to. You know how the children of Israel pined and mourned when they was carried into captivity.
I got my start o' daffydils from mother's gyarden, and every fall I'd divide the roots up and scatter 'em out till I got the whole place pretty well sprinkled with 'em, but the biggest part of 'em come from the old Harris farm, three or four miles down the pike. Forty years ago that farm was sold, and the man that bought it tore things up scandalous.
There was the usual exchange of wit. "When's the bloomin' war goin' to end?" asked one north-country lad. "Dunno," replied one of the south-shires. "We've planted some daffydils in front of our trench." "Bloomin' optimists!" snorted the man from the north. "We've planted acorns." The way they take air raids in England is illustrated by the following conversation from Punch: "Just ask Dr.
We loaded up the wagon with the pore things, and as soon as we got home, Abram took his hoe and made a little trench all around the gyarden, and I set out the Johnny-jump-ups while Abram finished his plowin', and the next day the rain fell on Abram's cornfield and on my flowers. "Do you see that row o' daffydils over yonder by the front fence, child all leaves and no blossoms?"
"It appears to me, child, you ought to know that without askin'," she said. "Did you ever see as many daffydils in one place before? No; and you never will. I've been plantin' that flower every spring for sixty years, and I've never got too many of 'em yet. I used to call 'em Johnny-jump-ups, till Henrietta told me that their right name was daffydil.
But Johnny-jump-up suits 'em best, for it kind o' tells how they come up in the spring. The hyacinths and tulips, they hang back till they know it'll be warm and comfortable outside, but these daffydils don't wait for anything.
He called it remodelin', I ricollect, but it looked more like ruinin' to me. Old Lady Harris was like myself; she couldn't git enough of these yeller flowers. She had a double row of 'em all around her gyarden, and they'd even gone through the fence and come up in the cornfield, and who ever plowed that field had to be careful not to touch them daffydils.
Well, every time I look at my daffydils I think o' them homesick Israelites askin', 'How can we sing the songs o' Zion in a strange land? "You needn't laugh, child. A flower is jest as human as you and me. Look at that vine yonder, takin' hold of everything that comes in its way like a little child learnin' to walk.
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