Daffodil Days

Thousands of daffodils are coming to the Vineyard on Tuesday, as part of an annual fund-raiser for the American Cancer Society.

Boxes containing 11,000 flowers will arrive Tuesday morning at 10:15 a.m. on the ferry. A team of core volunteers will meet at the Steamship Authority in Vineyard Haven to collect and then distribute the budding flowers.

The bouquets of 10 daffodils each will be sold for $10 at local businesses, including Stop & Shop in Edgartown and Tony’s Market in Oak Bluffs on March 20 and at Cronig’s Market in Vineyard Haven and the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital cafeteria on March 21.

Any additional cash donations will allow volunteers to distribute daffodils to nursing homes, senior centers and Martha’s Vineyard Hospital.

Dorothy Bangs of Vineyard Haven will oversee this year’s fund-raising effort, as she has done for so many years.

Mrs. Bangs says she can’t remember precisely when she started helping with the fund-raiser, but that it was probably around the 1980s. She’s participated every year since. Now 87 years old, she says this year will be her last.

Mrs. Bangs hopes to reach above last year’s raising of $11,000. The most the two-day fund-raiser has ever generated is $14,000, she says.