And where you see clouds upon the hills
You soon will see crowds of daffodils
“April Showers,” B. G. De Sylva
Daffodils are a sweet, cultivated obsession. By mid April I see them everywhere in southern New England. No spring flower is more widely planted, along 
with their close relatives narcissi and jonquils. Long extolled by poets and artists for their beauty, it’s the contagious courage of daffodils that I find most endearing.
At mid month my wife Mary and I found ourselves in a sloping landscape threaded with lichen crusted stonewalls and rock outcrops where thousands of the flowers grew in clusters beneath mature sugar maples. In an area squeezed between dense woods and a cattle pasture we made our way down a grassy path to a pond where more flowers grew on small islands. Though we’d arrived in the middle of a weekday, we were among many visitors making a pilgrimage to Laurel Ridge Foundation in Litchfield, Connecticut where thousands of daffodils of every description have bloomed since the 
early 1940s when they were planted by farsighted Remy and Virginia Morosani.
It’s a peaceful sanctuary perched on the corner of wild and cultivated where elderly couples, young lovers, and parents with little children walked slowly and absorbed the quiet as the flowers swayed in a gentle breeze. Traditional yellow daffodils and white narcissi stood out among green grasses fattened by recent rains, along with seemingly endless distinct varieties, some with ruffled petals, orange centers, and other more subtle differences. They seemed so bright and eager, tender looking, a living and palpable metaphor for spring. We imagined they had faces and wondered if they were speaking or listening with their trumpet-like tubes surrounded by six petals forming a star-shape.
