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.
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, William Wordsworth
Wild daisies grow everywhere on the Farm in spring, their seeming ubiquity assisted by gravity, the wind, the birds, and our head gardener, Helen. Each year, whenever their stalks first rise above the grass, Helen issues an edict that they shall not be mowed. At first, I honor her edict with reluctance whenever I drive the big tractor, since I love a well-mown field and it seems a waste of time and diesel not to trim each field to a uniform height in order that morning and evening shadows might be displayed to their best effect. But I have learned patience because Helen is an artist, and the flowerbeds and fields are her outdoor media; because all outdoor art takes its own sweet time in development.
So it is that bright-white lines of daisies come to line our driveway, our pastures, and our side of the two lanes bordering the Farm. Long rows sparkle in warm sunlight and sway in light spring breezes like choruses of synchronized, high-kicking dancers linked arm-in-arm across a tinseled stage.
But it is the clumps of daisies that grow in random serendipity in our fields that delight me the most. Some are twenty feet across and some only inches, but all of them, whether big or small, cling to the fields like fleece. While nature decrees their locations, we edit their shapes so that most are circular due to size of our fields and the nature of the mechanical beasts we must employ in our constant attempts to bring our fields to heel.
Helen’s edict is applied clump-by-clump, lasting until all constituent daisies have gone to seed and only stalks remain. She lifts her edict only when the winds and the birds have eaten their fill of the daisies’ blessings and their final white amen has fallen to the ground.
