Random Acts Of Kindness Week

“Do something for somebody every day for which you do not get paid.”~ Albert Schweitzer

What have you done lately? I think one of my most enjoyable Random Acts of Kindness was to plant some daffodil bulbs beside a particularly unattractive spot along a road I used to travel on my way home to our house on Elk Lake. Each spring, I'd smile as I drove past those lovely nodding yellow trumpets knowing I'd brightened a spot for everyone who passed by. I could hear in my mind such things like "I wonder how they got THERE" or "Isn't nature grand" . Until now, I've never told a soul.........

Speaking of daffodils, a few years later the owners of a property along the same stretch of road planted what I'd guess to be 300 - 500 bulbs out on the boullevard after labourously digging over hard virgin ground and covering it with a thick blanket of leaf mulch. I often wonder if they got the idea from that original small patch I'd planted............ I was so overcome with joy everytime I saw their daffodil planting that I reproduced the wonderful poem by William Wordsworth that I had loved in school and secretly and annonymosly left in their mailbox thanking them for the joy they had brought to my day.

"Daffodils" (1804)

I WANDER'D 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 stretch'd 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.

By William Wordsworth (1770-1850).