The wind was working itself up to a hoolie, and the air was decidedly "fresh", to put it mildly, but the daffodils were opening their flowers as though it was a warm and pleasant day in some balmy southern spring, apparently unaware that in fact they were in the exposed and increasingly wild west Highlands of Scotland…
Although he loved to see drifts of pure yellow daffodils, Algy was particularly intrigued by the bicoloured ones in his assistants' garden, for they matched his own colouring so well, and each year when they started to flower he settled down on the grass among them and pretended for a while that he was a daffodil too… or sometimes that they were a flock of wee fluffy birds like him…
Tucking himself down as low as possible on the lee side of the clump, with his blue winter scarf wrapped snugly around his neck, Algy inhaled the wonderful scent of the opening flowers and reflected:
A little Madness in the Spring Is wholesome even for the King, But God be with the Clown – Who ponders this tremendous scene – This whole Experiment of Green – As if it were his own!
[Algy is thinking of the poem A little Madness in the Spring by the 19th century American poet Emily Dickinson.]
