THE DAFFODIL PRINCIPLE

                      THE DAFFODIL PRINCIPLE !!!!


Several times my daughter had telephoned to say.
“Mother, you must come see the daffodils before they
are over.” I wanted to go, but it was a two-hour drive
from Laguna to Lake Arrowhead. Going and coming took
most of a day–and I honestly did not have a free day
until the following week.

“I will come next Tuesday,” I promised, a little
reluctantly, on her third call.

Next Tuesday dawned cold and rainy. Still, I had
promised, and so I drove the length of Route 91,
continued on I-215, and finally turned onto Route 18
and began to drive up the mountain highway. The tops
of the mountains were sheathed in clouds, and I had
gone only a few miles when the road was completely
covered with a wet, gray blanket of fog.

I slowed to a crawl, my heart pounding. The road
becomes narrow and winding toward the top of the
mountain. As I executed the hazardous turns at a
snail's pace, I was praying to reach the turnoff at
Blue Jay that would signify I had arrived.

When I finally walked into Carolyn's house and hugged
and greeted my grandchildren, I said, “Forget the
daffodils, Carolyn! The road is invisible in the
clouds and fog, and there is nothing in the world
except you and these darling children that I want to
see bad enough to drive another inch!”

My daughter smiled calmly,” We drive in this all the
time, Mother.”

“Well, you won't get me back on the road until it
clears–and then I'm heading for home!” I assured her.

“I was hoping you'd take me over to the garage to pick
up my car. The mechanic just called, and they've
finished repairing the engine,” she answered.

“How far will we have to drive?” I asked cautiously.
“Just a few blocks,” Carolyn said cheerfully.

So we buckled up the children and went out to my car.
“I'll drive,” Carolyn offered. “I'm used to this.” We
got into the car, and she began driving.

In a few minutes I was aware that we were back on the
Rim-of-the-World road heading over the top of the
mountain. “Where are we going?” I exclaimed,
distressed to be back on the mountain road in the fog.
“This isn't the way to the garage!”

“We're going to my garage the long way,” Carolyn
smiled, “by way of the daffodils.”

“Carolyn,” I said sternly, trying to sound as if I
were still the mother and in charge of the situation,
“please turn around. There is nothing in the world
that I want to see enough to drive on this road in
this weather.”

“It's all right, Mother,” she replied with a knowing
grin. “I know what I'm doing. I promise you will never
forgive yourself if you miss this experience.”

And so my sweet, darling daughter who had never given
me a minute of difficulty in her whole life was
suddenly in charge – and she was kidnapping me! I
couldn't believe it. Like it or not, I was on the way
to see some ridiculous daffodils - driving through the
thick, gray silence of the mist-wrapped mountaintop at
what I thought was risk to life and limb.

I muttered all the way. After about twenty minutes we
turned onto a small gravel road that branched down
into an oak-filled hollow on the side of the mountain.
The Fog had lifted a little, but the sky was lowering,
gray and heavy with clouds.

We parked in a small parking lot adjoining a little
stone church. From our vantage point at the top of the
mountain we could see beyond us, in the mist, the
crests of the San Bernardino range like the dark,
humped backs of a herd of elephants. Far below us the
fog-shrouded valleys, hills, and flatlands stretched
away to the desert.

On the far side of the church I saw a
pine-needle-covered path, with towering evergreens and
manzanita bushes and an inconspicuous, hand-lettered
sign “Daffodil Garden.”

We each took a child's hand, and I followed Carolyn
down the path as it wound through the trees. The
mountain sloped away from the side of the path in
irregular dips, folds, and valleys, like a deeply
creased skirt.

Live oaks, mountain laurel, shrubs, and bushes
clustered in the folds, and in the gray, drizzling
air, the green foliage looked dark and monochromatic.
I shivered. Then we turned a corner of the path, and I
looked up and gasped.

Before me lay the most glorious sight, unexpectedly
and completely splendid. It looked as though someone
had taken a great vat of gold and poured it down over
the mountain peak and slopes where it had run into
every crevice and over every rise. Even in the
mist-filled air, the mountainside was radiant, clothed
in massive drifts and waterfalls of daffodils. The
flowers were planted in majestic, swirling patterns,
great ribbons and swaths of deep orange, white, lemon
yellow, salmon pink, saffron, and butter yellow.

Each different-colored variety (I learned later that
there were more than thirty-five varieties of
daffodils in the vast display) was planted as a group
so that it swirled and flowed like its own river with
its own unique hue.

In the center of this incredible and dazzling display
of gold, a great cascade of purple grape hyacinth
flowed down like a waterfall of blossoms framed in its
own rock-lined basin, weaving through the brilliant
daffodils.

A charming path wound throughout the garden. There
were several resting stations, paved with stone and
furnished with Victorian wooden benches and great tubs
of coral and carmine tulips.

As though this were not magnificent enough, Mother
Nature had to add her own grace note - above the
daffodils, a bevy of western bluebirds flitted and
darted, flashing their brilliance. These charming
little birds are the color of sapphires with breasts
of magenta red. As they dance in the air, their colors
are truly like jewels. Above the blowing, glowing
daffodils, the effect was spectacular.

It did not matter that the sun was not shining. The
brilliance of the daffodils was like the glow of the
brightest sunlit day. Words, wonderful as they are,
simply cannot describe the incredible beauty of that
flower-bedecked mountain top.

Five acres of flowers! (This too I discovered later
when some of my questions were answered.) “But who has
done this?” I asked Carolyn. I was overflowing with
gratitude that she brought me - even against my will.

This was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

“Who?” I asked again, almost speechless with wonder,
“and how, and why, and when?”

“It's just one woman,” Carolyn answered. “She lives on
the property. That's her home.” Carolyn pointed to a
well-kept A-frame house that looked small and modest
in the midst of all that glory.

We walked up to the house, my mind buzzing with
questions. On the patio we saw a poster. “Answers to
the Questions I Know You Are Asking” was the headline.
The first answer was a simple one. “50,000 bulbs,” it
read.

The second answer was, “One at a time, by one woman.
Two hands, two feet, and very little brain.”

The third answer was, “Began in 1958.”

There it was. The Daffodil Principle.

For me that moment was a life-changing experience. I
thought of this woman whom I had never met, who, more
than thirty-five years before, had begun – one bulb
at a time– to bring her vision of beauty and joy to
an obscure mountain top. One bulb at a time.

There was no other way to do it. One bulb at a time.
No shortcuts - simply loving the slow process of
planting. Loving the work as it unfolded.

Loving an achievement that grew so slowly and that
bloomed for only three weeks of each year. Still, just
planting one bulb at a time, year after year, had
changed the world.

This unknown woman had forever changed the world in
which she lived. She had created something of
ineffable magnificence, beauty, and inspiration.

The principle her daffodil garden taught is one of the
greatest principles of celebration: learning to move
toward our goals and desires one step at a time -
often just one baby-step at a time – learning to love
the doing, learning to use the accumulation of time.

When we multiply tiny pieces of time with small
increments of daily effort, we too will find we can
accomplish magnificent things. We can change the
world.

“Carolyn,” I said that morning on the top of the
mountain as we left the haven of daffodils, our minds
and hearts still bathed and bemused by the splendors
we had seen, “it's as though that remarkable woman has
needle-pointed the earth! Decorated it.

Just think of it, she planted every single bulb. For
more than forty years. One bulb at a time! And that's
the only way this garden could be created. Every
individual bulb had to be planted. There was no way of
short-circuiting that process. Five acres of blooms.
That magnificent cascade of hyacinth!

All, just one bulb at a time.”

The thought of it filled my mind. I was suddenly
overwhelmed with the implications of what I had seen.
“It makes me sad in a way,” I admitted to Carolyn.
“What might I have accomplished if I had thought of a
wonderful goal forty years ago and had worked away at
it 'one bulb at a time' through all those years? Just
think what I might have been able to achieve!”

My wise daughter put the car into gear and summed up
the message of the day in her direct way. “Start
tomorrow,” she said with the same knowing smile she
had worn for most of the morning. Oh, profound wisdom!

It is pointless to think of the lost hours of
yesterdays. The way to make learning a lesson a
celebration instead of a cause for regret is to only
ask, “How can I put this to use tomorrow?”

I also learned on that gray and golden morning what a
blessing it is to have a child who is not a child
anymore but a woman – perceptive and loving beyond
her years – and to be humble in that awareness.

Thank you, Carolyn. Thank you for lessons of that
unforgettable morning. Thank you for the gift of the
daffodils.

by: Jaroldeen Asplund Edwards

“It takes courage to push yourself to places that you
have never been before… to test your limits… to
break through barriers. And the day came when the risk
it took to remain tight inside the bud was more
painful than the risk it took to blossom.”
                            Anais Nin