For this Jersey girl, Texas weather is so very odd. It’s February. One day it’s below freezing, the next day we’re wearing shorts. Then it drops back down to frigid. The plants don’t even know when to come up or not. It was warm enough to open the windows the other day, which the cats enjoyed immensely, and as you might see in the background the daffodils are not just poking through the ground, they are actually blooming. I have a vague memory that this happened last year as well. And I remember thinking “no, daffodils! you’ll die when it gets cold again!” which of course, isn’t quite true. It doesn’t really get cold enough here to kill cold weather plants. And I enjoy seeing the daffodils’ smiling faces. They offer a burst of color in the midst of grey winter.

That was last year. Time and experience have a way of changing our perspective on things. This year I see the early daffodils as a message of hope. Winter will soon be over. There is a time and a reason to bloom, even if it doesn’t feel like the time is quite right. The daffodil does not ask permission to bloom, nor does it wonder if its timing is accurate. It just does what it made to do, not worrying about what others will think of it. I’d like to be like that too.