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I look forward to Daylight Saving Time each year. While I do miss that extra hour of sleep, Daylight Saving Time is a true harbinger of spring. But for me, the true sign of spring are the first daffodils in my yard. I looked out my back door this week, and seeing the first two blooming brought me great joy.

This winter has been hard on some of my plants. I have plants and trees that I’ve had for a long time, some of them 20 to 38 years. Two of my trees Madeline, and Mary Lou, who are almost forty years old, dropped a massive amount of leaves this winter and are striving to thrive. I left one plant named Goldie, an 8-year-old beautiful yellow spotted leaf plant outside on a freezing cold night by mistake and it died. Fern Palmetto, a seven-year-old tropical fern died when I accidentally placed her in a pail to be watered, not realizing the pail had soap residue in it and it killed the plant.

So, the joy of seeing the daffodils really lifted my plant loving heart.

A wonderful friend, Robert, gave me a beautiful tulip plant last Sunday in church. I’ve named the plant ‘Roberta’ and it will join my tulip garden on the next warm 60-degree day. The gift of that tulip plant blessed me so much. It brought back some wonderful stories I heard about Washington’s Tulip Festival.

I can see why the festival was a wonderful event. According to Isabel Carter Worthy, (a contributor to the book ‘Washington On The Pamlico’) “the Tulip Festival was the idea of Mrs. Olive Rumley for a folk festival in the Spring, to honor both the Dutch Colonists of Terra Ceia and the beautiful tulip flowers they grew.”

The first festival was held April 6th-7th, 1937 and continued until 1941, suspended by World War 2. The festival was a community wide project that had the cooperation of Beaufort County and Washington City Schools, Book Clubs, The Chamber of Commerce, The Rotary and Lions Clubs, The American Legion Auxiliaries and many other groups.

The festival was held the first week in April as it was the peak blooming season.

Tulips were everywhere in Washington. The flowers became the staple of major tourist attractions for years. There were many different events that were celebrated including parades, with elaborately decorated floats, and some of the Dutch community singing folk songs while dressed in native costumes in the parade.

In 1940, according to the book, Washington On The Pamlico, an estimated 30,000 people were in attendance. Traffic was so heavy coming from Greenville to Washington; it took two hours to travel to the festival.

Even many years after the festival ended, the Dutch heritage continued to be shared. I remember as a Primary school aged-child learning about the festival at school. We would make crepe paper tulips to decorate the classroom and learn about Dutch culture.

The festival was revived briefly in the late 1980’s. It was estimated there were 4,000 people in Washington to attend the first day. That attendance was said to top the renown Wilmington NC’s Azalea Festival that year. It would be wonderful to have the Tulip Festival revived again. Or a Daffodil Festival would be awesome too! This year, Fremont, a town near Goldsboro, will celebrate its 37th Daffodil Festival on March 22.

Those daffodils and tulips growing in the coldest of weather, are a testimony. Proving that in the harshness and hardness of late winter, there is always beauty around us to encourage us. This shows us that we too can bring forth something beautiful from inside us, even in hard times.