Blue Ridge Country - November/December 2018 - 66

SINGING IN THE GARDEN

Ten thousand reasons to smile
...And then my heart with pleasure fills, and dances with the daffodils.
-William Wordsworth
Text and art by GINNY NEIL

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.
-William Wordsworth
64

BLUERIDGECOUNTRY.COM

W

hen I was a teenager my
mother determined that
her children could use a
little more refining. In addition to insisting that we
all attend cotillion, she decided to prepare us for the
moment, as she put it, "that we might be
invited to eat dinner with the president."
Sunday dinners were our training
grounds for this far-flung possibility, and
in addition to learning to eat fried chicken
with a fork and knife, our mother determined that memorizing and reciting poetry
would provide us with topics for stimulating conversation should the need arise.
Therefore, Sunday afternoons found the
three of us frantically scanning poetry books
for something to recite so that we would be
allowed to learn to spoon soup away from
our mouths. My brother and I always opted
for the shortest poem we could find, but
my oldest sister took the high road. She
memorized poems by Robert Frost and Em-

ily Dickenson. Thus, the day I stood, drew a
deep breath and in one long exhalation repeated William Carlos Williams', "so much
depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed
with rain water beside the white chickens,"
my sister rose and serenely recited all 154
words of William Wordsworth's "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud."
I was mesmerized by the startling image
of "a host of daffodils as continuous as the
stars." I decided that one day I would create a field like that, so the first fall after my
husband and I moved into our new house,
I started "Project Daffodil." When the last
autumn leaf swirled down, I planted 50
daffodil bulbs on the hill that shoulders up
against the yard. Each fall since then, I have
added to the collection.
That first fall, I spaced the bulbs out over
the whole field, and the display the following spring was disappointing. Two acres of
hillside freckled with 50 daffodils isn't very
showy. In fact, they were hard to spot unless
you knew where to look.


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Blue Ridge Country - November/December 2018

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Blue Ridge Country - November/December 2018

Blue Ridge Country - November/December 2018 - Intro
Blue Ridge Country - November/December 2018 - Cover1
Blue Ridge Country - November/December 2018 - Cover2
Blue Ridge Country - November/December 2018 - 3
Blue Ridge Country - November/December 2018 - 4
Blue Ridge Country - November/December 2018 - 5
Blue Ridge Country - November/December 2018 - 6
Blue Ridge Country - November/December 2018 - 7
Blue Ridge Country - November/December 2018 - 8
Blue Ridge Country - November/December 2018 - 9
Blue Ridge Country - November/December 2018 - 10
Blue Ridge Country - November/December 2018 - 11
Blue Ridge Country - November/December 2018 - 12
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Blue Ridge Country - November/December 2018 - 18
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Blue Ridge Country - November/December 2018 - 20
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Blue Ridge Country - November/December 2018 - 65
Blue Ridge Country - November/December 2018 - 66
Blue Ridge Country - November/December 2018 - 67
Blue Ridge Country - November/December 2018 - 68
Blue Ridge Country - November/December 2018 - Cover3
Blue Ridge Country - November/December 2018 - Cover4
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