Daffodils Are Up...

No, those are just paper flowers!

About half of them were made by some sisters in my ward, the other half by Abby and me, for our Relief Society Birthday Social / Dinner tonight. Another lady in our ward invented them and actually published a book about making all kinds of paper flowers out of ordinary copy paper, which is inexpensive, readily available, and curls well for petals and leaves.


There are about 70 daffodils in these pictures, but imagine happening upon ten thousand of them on a lakeside walk, as William Wordsworth did. He tells the story in this poem from 1804, which has emerged as my favorite poem of all time, I think (I published it in this blog last spring, too):

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.