While out for an after-dinner stroll, I came across this woody knoll of trilliums.

I was fortunate to stumble on them at the height of their blooming glory.

The well-worn path indicates many others have been here before me. There were a few little pot holes too, indicating gardeners have been here to try to take some plants home.

I have three trillium plants in my garden, one I got from a vendor at the Parkdale Market a few years ago. The other two I bought from Artistic Landscape on Bank Street at Johnstone Road (about $7, I think) which has a large bed they propagate their own plants in.

About one in a thousand of the plants in the wood had a red bloom, not to be mistaken for a fading white bloom that developes a pinkish hue as it fades away.

I thought it would be rather easy to Ontarioize Wordsworth’s poem:

“Daffodils” (1804)

I WANDER’D 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 stretch’d 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 waves 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.

By William Wordsworth (1770-1850).