Matchy-Matchy

I only call daffodils daffodils when I’m around serious people. The rest of the time, they’re daffies. And crocuses are croakies and clematises are clemmies. I also routinely say “orgasmic” instead of organic — in the grocery store. My kids think I’m weird.

The daffies are in bloom right at this very moment. All over the place. Almost every yard and field and ditch and park has at least one clump of daffies sprouting up from the sodden soil. Sometimes they’re bowed over from rain pummel and sometimes they’re different colors like creamy white and egg yolk yellow, like a fried egg if you’re the kind who easily associates flowers with food, like me.

I was driving to Portland last week. While scanning the side of the freeway, daffies stood out in their clumps of color and sometimes in whole swaths of golden springtime. The kid me wanted to stop and pick them but the adult me didn’t want the kid me to be the victim of a violent vehicular homicide. So I drove, like a mature adult.

Farther on, I noticed something else. Plump, round, garbage bags were perched intermittently along the sidelines, presumably filled with errant papery detritus by some prison gang or intrepid community service persons. Get this. Those puffy bags were the exact same yellow as the daffies. Is this a coincidence or did some really smart person in a high rise office complex somewhere in corporate-ville decide that roadside garbage bags should be the same color as daffies?

And don’t you think they should change the bag from yellow to orange when the California poppies start blooming in May? I do.