Daffodils for Rada

I made today's card for my mother-in-law, Rada. My husband flew to Croatia to see her and will hand deliver this to Rada on her birthday today. :) Every summer we go to Croatia to see her and this time my husband will be going for a week to spend some mother/son time together.

I like the card much better in person than in the photo. I wish the picture was a little better, but I had to rush to take the picture so we could make it to the airport. The daffodils are embossed in gold and the sentiment is outlined in a shimmery soft gold (it looks very pronounced here for some reason). The papers are shimmery as well.

In Croatia this past summer, Rada pulled me aside and handed me a couple of poetry books she'd studied as an English Literature major in college many years ago. She loves poetry and asked me to read several of the poems aloud to her. So we sat together on her couch as I read to her Longfellow, Dickinson, and more.

She loves many poems, but her favorite poem of all is The Daffodils by William Wordsworth. I must have read it to her at least a half dozen times. Her name translated means "daisy", so it seems especially fitting that her most favorite poem is about flowers.

Now everytime I see daffodils, I think of her.

So here is Rada's most favorite poem. Hope you enjoy it.

The Daffodils
by William Wordsworth

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.

Continuous as the stars that shine

   And twinkle on the Milky Way,

They stretched 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 leaves 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.