Please don’t eat the daisies

I saw an unlikely daisy the other day and it reminded me of all the things I love about my second favorite flower.

As a somewhat reformed matchmaker myself, I appreciate their Dolly Levi-ness, the way they gracious allow an earnest accounting of their petals to determine true love.

I also like the way they prop their feet up and make themselves at home in almost any setting — bridal bouquets, mason jars, the wispy top of a toddler’s head. Daisies stand as tall and as proud in farmer’s fields and river banks as they do on country club lanes and well-manicured city lawns.

It doesn’t matter if they’ve been dropped from some bird’s beak and left to self-cultivate, or planted with horticultural precision by a well-paid landscape artist, all daisy seeds grow up believing they are beautiful and so they are.

They’re cheerful little buggers, too, Welcome Wagon kind of neighbors who encourage other flowers of varying colors and blooms to take root. I recently saw a whole bunch of daisies in a garden with a renegade rose smack in the middle of them and it struck me how perfectly themselves the flowers all looked and how happy to be so they seemed.

A plucked daisy stays fresh for the longest time, they’re the stalwarts of any fancy floral arrangement. But, I like to let them bloom where they planted.

And, here’s a hint for the lovelorn among you: if you pick a daisy to measure your mate’s heart, make sure it has an odd number of petals. Those are the daisies that aim to please.

I know the headline makes no sense, but I like Doris Day as much as I like daisies (and for many of the same reasons) and I remember really enjoying that movie as well.