The Beauty At The End Of The Journey

I’ve always had a great love of daffodils or jonquils or whatever they’re called. My mom used to have a beautiful row of them in front of the house when I was a kid

… and when I could smell their delicious fragrance not only did I know spring had finally sprung from out the depths of winter, but that my birthday was coming. Somehow the smell of jonquils and the smell of birthday cake seem to go together even today!

Though my art is photography based now, as a kid, I was the one with pencils and papers never far from my elbow. One of my first “important” works was the colored pencil recreation of a vase of Mom’s jonquils, long past their prime.

Back in the day … long, long ago in a very small-town-world, the depiction of a dead or dying flower was an unusual and unique concept. So much so that my art teacher requested the piece and entered it into something or other that summer. Of course we never found out what happened to it, and of course we never got it back. But my mom, well into her 70s, still bemoaned the loss of that little picture.

Not a clue why I never attempted to recreate it for her during her lifetime.

Many of the jonquils / daffodils in my garden at my present home are the bulbs and offspring of the bulbs given to me by my Mom. And every spring when they bloom, I carefully allow some of them to live out their beauty in a pretty crystal vase, right to the end of their own personal journeys.

As always, clicking the images will take you to their spot on my website where you can view them with a much less intrusive watermark.