Last fall, a northern mail-order company sent me a free sample: five daffodil bulbs.

Because daffodils won’t grow in South Florida, I tossed them in the trash can.

A little later, I thought, “What the heck.” I retrieved them and put them in the vegetable drawer in my refrigerator. There they sat all winter, until late last month when I got tired of having them take up space meant for broccoli. So I planted them in a clay pot and put it out in the sun in the back yard.

In a few days, the bulbs sprouted leaves, and in a couple of weeks, two produced daffodils — one each. Puny little flowers they were, nothing like the mammoth golden trumpets I remember from a northern spring, or even the pots of blooming daffodils sold at Publix.

Was I proud of this gardening feat? Hardly. When the weather turns hot and wet, the bulbs, I suspect, will turn to mush. Unless I dig them up and return them to the refrigerator, which I have no intention of doing.

NEVER SAY NEVER

Nevertheless, it appears that Henry Wilk and I have something in common.

Wilk’s wife, June, recently sent me a photo of a plant growing in a pot at their home in Margate. It is unmistakably a lilac with a tiny cluster of lavender blossoms, even though lilacs don’t grow in South Florida. It was started from a cutting Wilk took from their daughter’s garden in Columbus, Ohio, and brought home in August 1990. Just before last Christmas, flower buds appeared.

In the note that came with the picture, June wrote, “Henry’s done it again.” She was referring to another photo she sent me in 1988, showing a chestnut tree Henry grew from a nut from the supermarket. That tree is still alive and growing, although it has produced only two or three pods containing tiny chestnuts.

“It’s a challenge. Somebody says you can’t grow it, and I’ll go after it,” Henry Wilk said when I called. “It’s not only that. I like all green stuff.”

I can understand that.

Henry’s lilac cutting and my daffodil bulbs cost neither of us a dime. Our only expenses were a couple of pots, some soil and a little time. Our plants may struggle along for a while, but they’re not going to like it.

NOT MUCH COMPETITION

So places like Rochester, N.Y., which has a Lilac Festival each May, and Callaway Gardens in Georgia, which has a “Celebration of Spring” this month and next and will be virtually infested with daffodils, haven’t much to worry about. I don’t envision floats, steel bands, parachuting clowns or mobs of visitors fighting to view our lilacs and daffodils.

There are plants I would love to have in my garden. Hostas. Bearded iris. Peonies. The current Jackson & Perkins catalog has a photo of Himalayan blue poppies I’ve been salivating over. If I were willing to spend $9.95 for one dormant root division — and I’m not — I would give it a try.

The key word is dormant. Lilacs, daffodils, chestnuts — and, I suppose, Himalayan blue poppies, although I’ve never grown them — need a long cold spell in winter.

So despite my success in getting two daffodils to bloom, I still say daffodils won’t grow in South Florida. My refrigerator is a poor substitute for a New Jersey winter.