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Feb 3, 2023Liked by Robyn Ryle

I bought many packets of vegetable seeds yesterday - a human version of green shoots on a winter's day

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That is very exciting! Did you order them online?

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Feb 6, 2023Liked by Robyn Ryle

I did, mostly from Bakers Creek

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So true. We need the coziness and chill of winter to appreciate the daffodils.

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Yes, though wouldn't mind if the chill was a wee bit shorter!

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From my perch near Lake Superior, your photo of daffodil shoots poking out of the front bed seems surreal. Here it is a winter wonderland still, and daffodil shoots are months off. (Fine by me, but you have to like that sort of fact to thrive here.) I love your thoughts about what's happening below ground while above, we tend to be unaware. I have those same kinds of thoughts when I look out at the inland lake we live on. What is happening below the ice? Fish are swimming, incredibly enough from a topside perspective. And much else I know little of. Frogs are burrowed in mud, hibernating? Turtles are... I don't know what. Moving around, maybe. It looks so silent and deserted. But it isn't.

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I know! Driving up to the UP that one year in May was like driving back in time--out of spring and into winter. I wish I knew more about what was happening beneath the surface, too. What are the turtles doing? I know skunks do a sort of half-hibernation, though my grandfather always used to say you knew spring was coming when you started smelling the skunks again.

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My heart used to break when snow smothered the daffodils but this brief essay catture everything important about them, life, and about the change happening even when we can't see it. Love this so much.

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Thanks, Elizabeth! It is heart-breaking when they bloom in April and then get all droopy in a late frost. But even that droopiness doesn't stop them from blooming!

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Feb 5, 2023Liked by Robyn Ryle

I saw a brilliant illustration of these daffodil bulbs underground and one says to the other too “I can feel it’s time to come up now!” Then the next pic they’re all bent over in the wind and one of them says, “You idiot!” It really tickled me!

Thank you for this writing. It’s funny I’ve never really thought about daffodils before March but you’re so right, they’re almost good to go now some of them!

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I can always tell how early or late each spring is by looking at the pictures on my phone to see when the daffodils bloomed. Last year, I think they got caught in an April snow, and, yes, were a little droopy. Thanks for reading!

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