I often go with friends for mushrooms, this is probably remembered by regular readers of my blog (or maybe not, because the greatest concentration of "mushroom" posts in my feed is in the fall, during the most active mushroom season, and since then it's been half year). I live in the geographical region of Ukrainian Roztochya - a long hilly strip overgrown with forests, which stretches to the border with neighboring Poland and crosses it, so it is not surprising that most of my mushroom hikes take place in this area.
These places were once densely populated, since the days of the state of white Croats, whose settlements are waiting for their heyday of exploration in the surrounding forests. It was also convenient and safe to live near the forest during the Tatar invasions, when the Galician kingdom existed here, because only in the forest could one hide from these steppe encroachments.
The most tragic for this region is the recent history, when Western Ukraine was first under Bolshevik occupation. The guerrilla units of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, which had begun their struggle against German troops, did not surrender or lay down their arms after the defeat of the latter, and continued their armed resistance to Soviet rule. They did not have the resources for large-scale struggle, but they were masters of the underground struggle and did not give up until the end of the 1950s, fifteen years after the official end of World War II. In order to continue the struggle, UPA soldiers were forced to build hideouts - underground shelters in the woods, where they spent the winter and where they hid from NKVD units. There are many places near my village that remember these bloody skirmishes, and in the woods you can still find destroyed hiding places.
In order to deprive the Bandera partisans of their material base, the Enkavedists destroyed entire bypasses and even villages, especially those located close to the forest. Sometimes this village still exists on the map, has a name, and people are no longer there. I have seen many old abandoned gardens in places where people once lived during their mushroom journeys. However, these daffodils, depicted in the photo, surprised me.
Daffodils in our region do not grow wild, they are planted by people. In early April, my friends and I went on a picnic in the woods. We chose the same area where we usually go for mushrooms in the fall. We stopped at the edge of the forest, where there was no hint of human habitation. And yet, when I got out of the car, I saw a whole meadow of daffodil bushes. Most of them were without flowers, only one of them bloomed yellow. Probably once upon a time there was a manor house here, which was destroyed. It may have burned to the ground. But the daffodils survived and survived, although apparently they have gone so wild that most of them have lost the ability to bloom.
It's just unbelievable that I found these flowers in this place. Maybe people once lived here, maybe they died at the hands of murderers, and these daffodils are the only proof of their fact that they lived here, worked here, loved someone. It's like a natural monument… My guesses may not be accurate, but they have a basis, because somewhere a kilometer there is a chapel with a plaque on the wall with a long list of names of locals who died here in the unequal struggle against invaders.
I am glad that I took the time to write this post, because the thoughts about these daffodils have been living in my head for more than a month, now I could organize them and present them here. I hope this post was useful for you friends!