As Winter coughs up its last spiteful gobbets of unpleasant weather, daffodils are already extending their bulbous yellow heads above the flowerbed parapets.
William Wordsworth would call them "a host," but they're more like an unruly mob. If plants could carry flaming torches, then I'm sure they'd chase the monster Jack Frost out of the garden, rather than let him leave peacefully at his appointed time.
I'm not one to talk to flowers like experts say you should. I imagine they'd be brazenly conceited and pompous conversationalists, talking about themselves the whole time, never letting their interlocutor get a word in edgewise.
Evergreens in the garden must view the blooming of daffodils in Spring much as a black sheep views the visit of an especially obsequious gamboling lamb.
So come back frozen gray earth and brown sticks, all is forgiven? Not a chance. I'd much rather spend time with Spring's vainglorious popinjay than that unfriendly, miserable old curmudgeon called Winter.
