Reflections

Spring bulbs like these don't thrive in the Southwest desert.  I located some mini-daffs for my mom on Valentine's Day back in February, but they were for sale---potted---on a display rack outside a Tempe grocery. Mom and I both had gardened for many years in the Upper Midwest. Spring and the thousands and thousands of varieties of bulbs in those gardens of our memory were inseparable.
The bulbs in this photograph were spotted through the lens of my camera during a trip to the Dalmatian Coast a month later.  Naturalized in the garden of a country church on Corfu, they evoked the same powerful images for me of childhood and gardens past.
Jonquil, narcissus, daffodils. In truth, the terms have always blurred in my own gardening vocabulary.  But apparently the flat-bladed leaves of the plants, shown here, give them away: daffodils. Jonquil leaves are darker and shaped more like soda straws. Although there are also thousands of varieties of Narcissus, the most well known are the potted paperwhites on sale during the December holiday season.
Familiarity in the plant world tends to breed that kind of scrambled identity.  Popular names for plants quickly evolve from region to region. Witness the confusion that reigns when gardeners get together and compare notes about  what they know in their respective locations as cowslips, marsh marigolds, buttercups or kings cups.
One year I actually made it my mission to learn the Latin names of every plant in my garden. An exercise in futility. These days, I'm happy if I can come up with any description at all that would help the nursery clerk point me toward the right aisle or display rack in search of a particular perennial.
A rose by any other name?  To me the cheery faces in this photo spell and will always spell,  S-P-R-I-N-G.