Word has it that the daffodil fields in Skagit Valley are beginning their awesome display, an event that always precedes the tulip festival, celebrated in April.

Here is a map detailing which fields are beginning to show color. A suggestion for a family day trip in this second half of March (maybe on Easter, if the sun shines) is a visit to the Daffodil fields, followed by lunch at The Farmhouse Restaurant, followed by an afternoon stroll through downtown LaConner. This is the stuff that good memories are made of.

I WANDERED LONELY AS A CLOUD

William Wordsworth
I wandered lonely as a cloud:
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars
that shine and twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretched in never-ending line
along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
in such a jocund company:
I gazed - and gazed - but little thought
what wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.