Amador County – The Ryan families on Thursday announced that due to a storm of rain and hail, the Daffodil Hill has closed for the season.

The families announced in an e-mail Thursday that although they “had planned on being open through Easter Sunday, Mother Nature had other plans. The storm that hit (Wednesday) night and (Thursday) morning with rain and hail was the final straw. Quite simply, the great majority of our blooms are now gone. As such, we have little choice but to close Daffodil Hill for the season, effective immediately.”

The release said: “Our thanks to the thousands of people who visited the Hill this year. We look forward to seeing you again in 2012.” The Ryan Families, of George W., Martin A., and Michael E. Ryan have “undertaken the job of continuing the ‘Hill’ to honor our parents, as our parents did to honor theirs.”

McLaughlin’s Daffodil Hill has been a family project, which now includes 1,500 walnut trees, harvested annually to pay the Hill’s and other expenses. It is open each year, mid-March to mid-April, seven days a week, weather permitting, and has seen as many as 4,000 people in a given day.

The Ryans said their mother, Mary, who passed away in 2008, most eloquently wrote about why she and her husband, Judge Martin Ryan, and the family, keep up the Daffodil Hill tradition.

Mary wrote: “Many people have asked why we have created this spot of beauty. Perhaps it is because we enjoy seeing the bulbs blossom forth each springtime, so symbolic of Easter and the Resurrection. Perhaps it is because we want to keep the “old home place” from falling to ruin and neglect as so many of these old country places are doing. In part too, it is our way of perpetuating the memory of our parents, grandparents and those early-day farm folk whose way of life was so hard and so different from our present way of life.”

The Ryans’ great-grandparents, Arthur Burbeck McLaughlin and Lizzie Van Vorst McLaughlin, established McLaughlin Ranch, now Daffodil Hill, in 1887. When purchased, it was planted with daffodils. The “yellow blooms were Lizzie’s most prized possession and she divided and replanted the bulbs each year to increase the size of their garden.” The family continues to plant other daffodils in her memory, and the memory of other family members, and now there are approximately 6 acres of daffodils, with 300 varieties, and 500,000 blooms.

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