Thrilled by its encounter with the first daffodils that it had ever seen, the little green dragon be

Thrilled by its encounter with the first daffodils that it had ever seen, the little green dragon begged to see more flowers. In its arid and windswept homeland of faraway Patadragonia, the strange wee creature had rarely seen a flower, and certainly nothing as beautiful as the spring flowers of the temperate northern countries.

But it was only mid-March in the wild west Highlands of Scotland: there had evidently been plenty of snowdrops earlier on, but they had all finished flowering now, and most of the crocuses which normally grew in Algy’s assistant’s lawn had been flattened by the wind and the rain. Algy was temporarily at a loss, until his assistant pointed him at a wee raised box bed by her house wall, in which she had planted a new collection of spring bulbs the previous autumn. It was full of jewel-like crocuses which were only now beginning to turn their faces to the sun. The little green dragon was so enthralled by this new discovery that he began to glow in a purple hue.

Algy laughed, and recited an old poem to his funny little friend:

They heard the South wind sighing
   A murmur of the rain;
And they knew that Earth was longing
   To see them all again.

While the snow-drops still were sleeping
   Beneath the silent sod;
They felt their new life pulsing
   Within the dark, cold clod.

Not a daffodil nor daisy
   Had dared to raise its head;
Not a fairhaired dandelion
   Peeped timid from its bed;

Though a tremor of the winter
   Did shivering through them run;
Yet they lifted up their foreheads
   To greet the vernal sun.

And the sunbeams gave them welcome,
   As did the morning air—
And scattered o’er their simple robes
   Rich tints of beauty rare.

Soon a host of lovely flowers
   From vales and woodland burst;
But in all that fair procession
   The crocuses were first.

[Algy is quoting most of the poem The Crocuses by the 19th century American poet Frances Ellen Watkins Harper.]