Golden Daffodils Oil Painting

Last week I saw the steep banks bordering lower Rock Creek Parkway were full of yellow daffodils in bloom. It brought to mind that poem by Wordsworth all of my generation read in high school, "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud,"

(first stanza):

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.


--William Wordsworth, 1804


Today was our finest spring day to date. I remembered a small hillside at Brookside Gardens that has daffodils planted among birches and thought it would be delightful to paint there. The scent of daffodils and the witch-hazels perfumed the warm air as I worked. It felt so good to be outside it was hard to concentrate on the basics of painting.