There is nothing sweeter than the sight of bright yellow daffodils blooming in my yard, proclaiming that winter is almost over.

           I have been planting them for a while now—when we first moved here, our house had been a rental property for years, and there wasn’t a flower or shrub anywhere in the yard. So we set about transforming it.            

            Every winter I buy daffodil bulbs when they get heavily discounted at the end of the planting season. I also scavenge bulbs from property that is about to be developed. A couple years ago, before they built a shopping center on land where a civil war-era mansion had stood, I dug up about a thousand bulbs that had been there so long they were jammed together in big bunches.

            That’s the wonderful thing about daffodils. Those scavenged bulbs had probably been planted by someone who is long dead, and yet they live on, pushing through the cold earth in February and laughing at cold snaps, and finally opening up in a blaze of yellow glory that makes cars slow as they pass my house.

            Every once in a while we’ll buy some mail-order bulbs that catch our fancy, with triple blooms or different colors. But our favorites remain the thick beds of plain yellow flowers, coming back each year to make the world new again.

            You don’t have to be good at growing things to have success with daffodils. All you have to do is plant the bulb pointy side up, about 5 inches down in the soil, maybe with a small amount of bulb fertilizer. Don’t plant them too close together, because they will divide every year and make new daffodils. Try to plant them where the foliage can die back gradually after they bloom, and don’t mow them down until they’ve had a chance to store energy to be able to come back strong next year.

            Then you’ll be a Daffodil Man (or Woman) too!