If you need to watch your money, go for small, simple gifts, but always do quality! Showing class is always superior to tackiness and they will feel more special and associate you with quality. A cheaply made or cheesy gift is not likely to be favorably remembered by adults, but will soon become their clutter. Better to give one or two special flowers than a whole bouquet of common supermarket flowers. Inexpensive, tasteful, quality gifts might include: homemade preserves, four or more quality cloth napkins, a bottle of wine, a well made scented candle, a living plant, gourmet rice, a local item from a recent trip such as a wheel of cheese or a bar of handmade soap, or a small box or bar of gourmet chocolate.

To score a perfect match, choose items that most people use or that you know they in particular will use, and then just give quality. Avoid giving sweets to dieters and diabetics, wine to tea-totallers, books to non-readers, ties to casual dressers, and so forth. Secretly write down when someone mentions a small need or desire, because this could guide you to an excellent gift in the future. Surprisingly, most people have not gotten the item for themselves even half a year later.

Be careful giving gifts in the nature of the recipient’s expertise unless they have mentioned specifically what they want or you are certain of what will be well received. If they are an excellent gardener, you might wish to avoid giving plants or garden tools. If they are a wine connoisseur, it’s safest not to give wine. Their desires will be specific in these areas and it would be easy to miss the mark. On the other hand a quality, expensive gift in that area might be a great success if they don’t already have it.

I was working diligently one day in our family room while my then 3-year-old twins were building towers with their Duplos blocks. I had promised to take them into the back yard as soon as I finished a particular section in a lengthy article I was working on.

Then I began hearing the ripping sound of Venetian blinds opening and closing, like a zipper, up and down. I told the boys to be patient, that we would be going outside soon.

After about the third time of telling the twins to please leave the blinds alone, my child’s comment stopped me in my track.

“Mommy!” Mickael-Josef exclaimed in his sweet little 3-year-old, high-pitched voice, “Look, look, the ‘schoene Blumen’. Look, they’re blooming. Look!” (which is kid German mixed with English, for “Look, Look, the pretty flowers are blooming!”)

Forgetting that I was getting irritated about the Venetian blinds, I stopped my writing to turn around to look outside.

Golden, bright yellow daffodils shone like brilliant crowns outside my window on our hill near the creek. Right next to my desk and I had missed them.

Now, I knew that the daffodils were up and budding and all that. But I had been very busy the past few days with work, and, even though the weather had been so spring like, my mind was focused not on flowers but on deadlines.

I had always wanted my own Daffodil Hill. When I was growing up in Corvallis, my friend’s mom used to take us in early spring to the outskirts of town to this hill covered with a blanket of golden King Alfred’s. We called it Daffodil Hill. I have pictures of Jeanie, Julie, Jennifer and me holding bouquets of daffodils and wearing big smiles, while a sea of the bright yellows graced the background.

And here a few decades later, it struck me that I was missing my very own daffodil hill in my very own  yard.

I stopped my work, got my twins’ shoes on and told the boys that we are going outside to see the Schone Blumen, the daffodils.  And those King Alfreds are stunning. My child had not only noticed that the daffodils are blooming, but that they are pretty. Life through the eyes of a child is sweetness.

We looked around the yard for signs of other flowers coming up, and then picked a bouquet of bright yellow daffodils to light up our dining room.