In a Vase, on Monday – Daffodil Time Starts

Chris Mousseau

After a cold winter and a month-long delay to the start of spring blooms the garden is now quickly colouring up, with daffodils, even beyond the diminutive tête-à-tête variety, now starting to bloom. Expect several weeks of Monday vases filled with yellow, including today’s, which has the first three regular sized daffs to bloom this year. They’re in a new-to-me vase, a lovely mid century five finger swung blue glass wonder I spotted at my favourite local vintage shop a few weekends ago. I added a few red osier dogwood twigs since red, yellow and blue seem to form an ideal triangle on the colour wheel, and, indeed, to my eye.

The bottom of the vase is a bit wobbly – the glass blower might have been a bit sloppy when cutting it off the glass blowing rod, but it’s a small imperfection I can easily live with.

Another new vase this year, found at the same shop, is quite unusual. I’m not sure if it started life as a vase or perhaps as an olive oil vessel…but I love the bubbles that are in the glass, and the rustic and un-glamourous edges and overall shape. And the colour, of course! I filled it with the last of this year’s forced Forsythia twigs…the bushes in the garden started to bloom all on their own yesterday.

Many thanks to Cathy at Rambling in the Garden for hosting IAVOM and giving gardeners around the world an opportunity to share a vase (or two) of what’s growing in their garden.

20 Comments

  1. I’ve never felt much affection for or interest in daffodils, and I wonder if it might be due to the fact that I didn’t grow up with them. I don’t think I saw a daffodil growing until a decade ago; I’d only ever seen them in a grocery store. Forsythia, on the other hand, is a favorite, partly because of the overlay of memories — it was the one my mother would let me cut to bring into the house for forcing.

    That second vase was a real find. I love that one! It looks like a fancied-up laboratory beaker.

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    1. I gasped aloud when I read you’ve never felt affection or interest for daffodils!! Kidding…not really…but I don’t recall growing up with them either. I think I really started to appreciate them when I realized squirrels and rabbits left them alone, and I could plant them in drifts or singly with the expectation that they would indeed bloom the following spring, and for many springs thereafter. Unlike tulips. Or crocuses. And of course they make great cut flowers. So all in all great value for much joy in the early spring as everything else is coming out of dormancy.

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      1. I suspect my ‘meh’ reaction is related to almost never seeing them actually growing. Flowers that I only see wrapped in plastic in grocery store bins can be pretty, but there’s just something missing. The old saying is ‘familiarity breeds contempt,’ but it’s also true that familiarity can breed affection, and I’ve never lived in a place where I could become familiar with these (or crocuses, or muscari, or narcissus…)

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  2. Both the daffodil and forsythia are so cheerful! They finished quite a while ago here. Some of our forsythia does not bloom very well, perhaps because it does not get much chill.

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  3. Fortunate new vase finds…..both are pretty…I love bubbles captured in glass (& poured into a glass!!). Yellow is so cheerful! Thanks for letting us enjoy your blooms!

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  5. The first vase is such an interesting and useful shape – your vintage shop sounds a real asset! The dogwood twigs are perfect to join the daffodils, and the forsythia twigs look really elegant in their maybe-olive-oil vessel

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    1. Thanks Cathy. The Forsythia is gone now (from the vase) but the dogwood has sprouted leaves and tiny flower buds. I’m going to leave them there for a bit I think and add more stuff as the spring unfolds…

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  8. Two lovely vases Chris, and I bet it feels good to have flowers and colour in the garden again. I shall look forward to more yellow flowers in those nice vases. The main colour here at the moment is green – it seemed to happen overnight! 😄

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