Dorothy and Daffodils (but not Wordsworthian)

Shakespeare, in The Winter's Tale, speaks of "Daffodils that come before the swallows dare and take the winds of March with beauty."
[DAFFODIL] (Wachsberger & James), arrived for me today and within the first four lines, a Shakespeare quote!

...before I go any further I have to post a link to the Norana Earth Sciences Library at U of T or I will forget...

The book goes on to bring up names like Theophrastus, Alexander Neckham, and William Turner, turning into a page turner itself...it's had me thinking about taxonomies all the way home, which got me thinking about more courses to take (the first begins May 14th) Soil Composition and Plant Growth? I believe is the name - The Dirt on Dirt I call it, either makes me grin. I hope that by applying this gardenerding under some guidance might give me direction - I feel like I've got so much garbled information in my head and that if I could get it all into some coherent order I just might soar ;)
..then trip over my flip flops in the GH. Heh.

That's been on my mind, the greenhouse. Dorothy dies last week, her service was on Wednesday and I sort of wish I had gone, and I wish I could say something to her family. Feverfew is what I connect with Dorothy but really she talked to me about many flowers, and some weeds, and I remember her for thinking the same as I - that they were as pretty as any flower....she was so sweet. She was one of my favorites, and I'm going to think of her often on River Street this year.

I wonder about the man from Silver Islet - I didn't see him last year, but then I wasn't around the greenhouse nearly as much, it's more hopeful to think I just missed him. He always has a list, handwritten by his wife, of geraniums of specific colors, assorted pansies, marigolds and petunias and he loads flat after flat into the back of his truck while telling the most incredible story - all of which I heard over two seasons and several visits at the River Street greenhouse. He talks about gardening, and Silver Islet, and his experiences both there and on this side of the Giant with the soil, the weather, the climate, and the plants, people, his wife, their garden(s)...and I hope he knows how grateful I am to have privy to all that he has confided.

It's people like that, with their tales, that changes the greenhouse from being an ordinary laborious retail job...it's so much more. People and plants are drawn together for so many reasons and I've been soaking up these reasons for years without an outlet - damn me for not having been writing this long ago.

There was a man, a few years ago, who bought daisies. He told me as he chose them that he planted daises every year at his daughter's grave, they were her favorite. She died when she was 16. He had to have been in his late seventies, maybe eighties - and I thought at the time, as I do now about how I can recognize that he has been doing this for many years, many years without his daughter, and that is such a hurtful thought - but he was smiling at those daisies, and he was smiling at me, and that is what flowers do for people, which is such a significant reason for me enjoying my days at that greenhouse. I've never been able to look at a daisy since and not think of that girl and her father.

Somebody at work today smirked to me at the title of a book on the subject of plants of Middle Earth because there is just so much stuff on stuff and everything is written about. I was too embarrassed to admit that I had jotted down that title when I went through those slips earlier. I write down lots of titles though, so don't take anything seriously until you see me order it (I still have five more on the way) :P

Literature and people, people and flowers, people and their stories about their flowers, I'm really curious about it all.

I'm going to miss seeing Dorothy.