Hope Springs

It's a cold, gray, drizzly morning.  It rained during the night and the woodstove is doing its best to hold out the damp.  There were a few days of sunshine, but let another day like this come and it's as if those days never happened.  It's just light out enough to see, and there in the grayness I see a narcissus in bloom!  It's a harbinger that spring might be just around the corner and these winter doldrums will end.  Narcissus march at the front of the vanguard, followed by daffodils and forsythia waving their yellow banners.  Next, the slopes of my yard will be covered with tiny baby-blue-eyes and something that looks like a wild sweet pea in pink.  Days like this send me to the seed catalogs, knowing it is way too early to plant, but dreaming of armloads of flowers and baskets of vegetables to come. 

I have a question.  I know how bulbs divide and multiply, but how do they migrate?  Over the years, I have planted hundreds of daffodil, narcissus, crocus, day lily, freesia, and other assorted bulbs.  (I've tried tulips, too, but the squirrels dug them up before I could get back into the house.)  Not all have survived...some were eaten by tree squirrels, ground squirrels and gophers, some died of damp rot, some were pruned into oblivion by the deer.  What I want to know is how a bulb could end up over one hundred feet from any planting area.  Yesterday I noted a daffodil sending up shoots down by the path to the goat barn.  Now, I know I never planted a single bulb in that field.  Did it roll down a long gopher tunnel?  Did it somehow manage to move on its own like those mysterious rocks in the desert?  Is a bird redecorating my yard?  Something to ponder down in the goat barn while I wait for spring.