"I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud"

 

The kids are on Spring Break this week, and we visited the Tulip Festival as a mid-week activity. I'm so glad that the festival is happening this year. We have gone every year that we have lived here, except last year the festival was completely closed due to Covid. The closures happened just weeks before the festival was supposed to begin, and the farmers really suffered. I'm especially grateful that we could go this year.

I like to go earlier in the festival weeks, so that we can catch the beginnings of the tulips with the outgoing daffodils. There weren't as many tulips open as I hoped (although we did see plenty), but the daffodil fields were fabulous and full of color! 

Every time I see fields of daffodils, I'm reminded of the song "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" that I sang when I was in my first sixth grade choir. This song, inspired by Wordsworth's famous poem, is fun because the music parts "dance" and interplay with each other to create text painting that mimics the dancing of the daffodils in the wind. I still remember my choral part, and Vivian told me recently that she still remembers her part too. I've been searching for weeks to figure out the composer. The song was stuck in my head this afternoon (due to this trip to see the daffodil fields), and I finally figured out the composer from an obscure YouTube video. The version that we sang was by Mary Lynn Lightfoot (and I've been discovering some of her other choral compositions today too, and I really like her work). I ordered the sheet music so I can have a copy. If only our director Mrs. Burke knew that I still remembered the song she taught me over twenty-five years ago!