A Host of Golden Daffodils

Sunday's bulb pickup and planting was a big success. At 1 pm the Daffodil Project gave us two thousand bulbs (500 for the block associations) and by 6 p.m. we had planted more than a thousand (one tends to lose count after twenty) bulbs in two dozen pits. So if you want to imagine what West Chelsea will look like next April, think of Wordsworth:

I WANDERED LONELY AS A CLOUD
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
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 that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

Flower Power!