The trumpet's Baby Moons!

Because they were so gorgeous and so sudden in their appearance, it took me some time to realize they were daffodils, those flowers that made many poets so crazy about them, that they had to be imprisoned forever in poems that the world never forgets!

The ones I spotted first were white as fresh milk with glittering orange dots and those amazing trumpet petals! They looked right up into your eyes. But then after half an hour in their company I spotted another gathering of daffodils, these were lemon yellow, sprinkled with the gold glitter of the sun, and put their faces down, as if investigating the soil beneath! Or were they keeping their heads out of trouble from intruders? Their scented orange, white and yellow splatters dazzled the evening.

Daffodils are heavily scented and sometimes so overpowering is the smell that they can give headaches and dizziness to those who put their noses for too long in their beauty. Its leafy scent and very personal trumpet design ornaments gardens, churches, graveyards and roadsides during spring, between March and May. Its other names are Narcissus and Jonquil. The plant got its name from nacre 'dullness of sense'' from which is got the word narcotic. Egyptians used these flowers as funeral wreaths. This flower was being grown in Britain in early Tudor times and has more than a 100 designs to choose from, with trumpets, dots, necklaces, buttons and strong or pale scented petals.

In a closed room if there are many daffodils in vases, the scent can drive you crazy. It puts on a different dress and changes colours and styles in the various countries where it grows (not in India alas) - Spain, Portugal, Africa etc. It has charming names to go with its trumpets, crowns, caps and handkerchief patterns = it is called Mary Copland, Polar Ice, Angel's Tears, Cherie, Baby Moon and Sweetness to name just a few!

Daffodils amazed me all through the month with hundreds of gorgeous shining glamorous robes. But more than anything else, this flower which has been named Paper White, Silver Chimes, Cheerfulness, Santa Claus and Snowball, reminded me of the wisdom of silence and the wealth it can give us, when we just learn to stay still instead of trumpeting too much for very little of value!