The other week, I saw a concrete-bordered flower garden just off the street, that particular material identifying it as a garden crafted by “public works” since instead of concrete, the private homeowner usually uses things like plastic trellises, wooden rails, old railroad crossties, brick or native stone.

Normally, that elliptical garden would have stood apart from the roadway just on its own merit; but the day I looked, its dark winter mulch was outdone by the yellow “glare” from a single blooming daffodil within.

I passed there some days before, not noticing the preliminary stalk’s “winter-rising,” until its sunny bloom had “burst!”

The recent warm stretch had already yielded to a cold snap (cold “normal”), and I was sure the next time I saw the hopeful little plant, its stem would be arched over and down, dead flower browned, and touching the ground. I say “arched over and down” since a daffodil is not able to reverse-motion its stem in the manner of a turtle’s neck, though with the cold, it might have wanted to. (Just now, in ascribing such to the daffodil, I don’t know whether I’m being “anthropomorphic” or “turtlepomorphic.”)

But despite expecting its quick, frozen death, several days later I received a surprise!

The blooming plant was still standing tall (tall for winter), about 8 inches. Another daffodil, close by, had risen about 3 inches and looked to be preparing for “low bloom.”

I started thinking about other things associated with flowering plants, particularly pollination. Then really feeling like winter, these blooms could be compared to “wallflowers” at a dance, waiting for bees which would never show.

I had previously noticed tulip shoots there, topping the earth to about an inch; but they had seemingly thought better of it, and come to a halt.

Pansies were present there through all of this. I just didn’t mention them before, since their winter presence is a “given,” nothing out of the regular.

If there is such a thing in the world of flowering plants as a “pecking order” (like that of the barnyard), those pansies might have exclaimed (if suddenly graced with brain and speech): “Who do these silly, springtime, ‘daffydils’ think they are, us?”

A friend and colleague at the Danville Science Center, Ben Capozzi, happened to be passing by at the same time. Looking at the out-of-season blooms, the manner in which he said “Oh noooooo!” caused me to suddenly think of Mr. Bill.

Ben is a vegan, and truly cares about plants (most likely, because he wants to eat them).

This out-of-the-ordinary botanical occurrence first made me think summer was trying to return from the past, or spring was attempting a visit from the future. But then I thought of something darker, with ulterior motive: winter, being friends with those warmer seasons (many seeds, dropped in both, are not able to germinate without cold-weather “stratification”), had called in a favor, asking one of them to “toy” with the flora and fauna of certain latitudes, thereby raising hopes, and then to quickly depart, such sudden departure bringing a reiteration of “the power of the cold.”

As I write, those two blooms continue to give the look of spring warmth to the winter freeze, making me ask “Why do they remain standing?”

My “best I can come up with” answer: I guess they’re following their own particular “programming,” which dictates that after blooming, they stay above the ground for their “allotted” number of days, braving the cold and whatever else might come their way, before falling to the soil, dead.

They can do no other, for that is the only “viable” option, one not theirs alone.