Distance: 2 Miles
One of the great pleasures of living in the Bay Area is affordable fresh flowers all year round. A friend and former flower shop owner corrected me years ago when I said his store sold wonderful luxuries. "Flowers aren't luxuries, they're Necessities." And he's so right. By now fresh flowers have become constant companions/friends around my home.
At this time of year Trader Joe's (another necessity!) sells crates and crates of daffodils at 10 stems for $1.29! I and everyone I see walking out of T Joe's when I'm there buys at least one bunch. It must be amazing in other, more wintery parts of the country when these bright yellow bundles of cheer are suddenly in the stores - and at a price no one can walk past.
Certainly the flowers themselves blooming in England on a stormy day made an indelible impression on William Wordsworth - and became the subject of his most famous poem.
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.
Published in Collected Poems, 1815
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.
Published in Collected Poems, 1815
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