We asked our readers to help celebrate Daffy Daze — the Peninsula’s first Daffodil Festival sponsored by Vantreight Farms — this week by submitting their favourite daffodil photos and creating an original poem. Here are our top picks in all their golden glory.
Daffodil Clusters
Daffodil clusters along the way
Daffodils to help decorate on Easter Day
Daffodil golden in dappled light, daffodil rewarding the long winter wait, daffodil precious for you and for me.
By Lennor Stieda
Daffodils Dancing
Daffodils are dancing in the sun
Beautiful flowers for everyone
Pretty yellows and greens
The nicest I’ve seen
I really can’t wait to go pick one
By Marcus Templeman (age 10)
Cheery Daffodils
Cheery little daffodils
As golden as the sun.
You bring to us, the happy news,
That Old Man Winter is on the run!
By Pat Ramsey
Amber Glow
Spring on the Saanich Peninsula is marked by an amber glow.
For on the flats and up the hills, the golden daffodils grow.
This variety of narcissus around the world is known as the symbol of hope and loving and this is where it’s grown.
By Clem Tisserand
Our Golden Duty
We are the favoured ones across this mighty land,
For we are first to see Spring’s sunny omens
Stretching railway straight across the fields
In files of green, with here and there a flash of gold,
Like players peeking through stage curtains testing
The audience’ desire for all they have to give.
And yet, with but a scattering of their golden heads
Dancing in the breeze, the sombre shadows of the pickers
Move through the field, snicking with their greedy blades
Leaving only sad sharp green without the trace of gold,
That was the promise, that now has grown cold.
A lighter side to this sad tale exists, for we who first
Feel Spring’s sweet joy on this bless’d Island Paradise,
Must share this joy and send her heralds far and wide
Throughout the land, so golden blooms may lift the hearts
Of those still clamped by Winter’s icy hand and reassure
That Nature’s cycle still is turning free.
We too shall savour our reward, for those who tend this
Floral feast must look ahead for future blooms and so
To fill with bulbs the storehouse for tomorrows show,
The Daffodil must run its Nature’s course and thus
With glorious golden glow will pave some happy fields
From edge to edge with dancing, dipping flowers
Enough to sate the appetites of all!
By Jack Bowley