i’m not a flower person.

no, i don’t refer here to any post 60s throwback mentality. i just mean that, all things being equal, flowers don’t quite move me the way they do some other people.

a friend suggested a field trip for my family about an hour’s drive from us. we could go to this place where they have lots and lots of tulips. and we could look at the tulips. and we could enjoy looking at the tulips.

and i was like, “um, is there anything else to do there except look at tulips?” and she was sort of incredulous that i would ask such a dumb question- like in the face of such clear and overwhelming beauty, why would you need to do anything? and she told me again how very very beautiful it is- that as far as the eye can see there are just these beautiful colorful tulips… and i was like, “yeah no. that doesn’t sound like something i would do. but thanks for suggesting it.”

*h learned early on that i am not a flower girl. when pressed, i would accept carnations, preferably in a cheesy dyed color, like blue. but i don’t really like flowery smells (exception: real lilacs when they are actually growing on real trees). i don’t really like flowery prints or fabrics or designs or patterns. you get the picture.

so imagine my surprise when up popped in my very own backyard, completely unbidden, a very quaint and completely unobjectionable flower. i’ve seen them in books, but never in real life, so i asked a friend what they are called. and apparently they are daffodils.

and apparently they grow wild, or close to it in seattle, because these guys are everywhere. which kind of piques my curiosity: why hasn’t someone decided to exterminate them like they do to other things that grow freely and naturally?

just asking.

and then, guess what? we gave someone a baby gift, and as a thank you, they gave us a quaint little bouquet of sunny yellow daffodils.

which i put on my sunny windowsill.

in a happy vase.

so now i am officially a cliché.

or a hallmark card.

and i don’t really care.

so it appears that i do actually like flowers; it just took me half a lifetime to find the right ones.

and they are daffodils.

how happy :)

on a completely unrelated and less happy note: petunia, our champion egg-layer and all around sweet gal, is gimping around today with some sort of foot or ankle injury. my friend’s chicken did this for about 24 hours and then dropped dead (from sorrow, perhaps?)- so could you send some healing chicken wishes her way? short of that, or in addition to that, could you send me some ideas about how to help her? i think if she dies, i may bury her near the daffodils in the backyard (unlike the other chux who’ve died in their service to our family, who i rather unceremoniously threw in the trash. i know- i may have some bad karma coming my way for that…).

at this point, i’m thinking that if she’s not better in the next 24-48 hours, i might ask my more “ethnic” neighbors if they know anyone who would be willing to dispatch her quickly and put her out of her misery. or i might just OD her on pain meds…

but, let’s try to stay positive- let me know what you know and send some love to petuntia…

 

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