Various Daffodils and Deep Sleep Dreams

Have you ever had a deep sleep dream? I learned once about them. They are either rare, or we rarely wake directly from deep sleep, and so few are remembered. I had one last night. It was a strange dream. There was an image of a daffodil in front of me, and I was seeing it from various angles, and with various details coming into focus. There was no plot, no setting, no characters. It was just this daffodil, one that I saw in real life, and my mind was studying it intensely. When I woke up, because I got snagged on something in my bed, I remembered it, and I immediately recognized it as a deep sleep dream.

I remember learning once that deep sleep is when the brain strengthens important memories and connections, while eliminating superfluous memories and connections. It strengthens connections by firing them repeatedly. So, when you dream in deep sleep, you are witnessing the repeated firing of connections your brain determines to be important. The last deep sleep dream I remember was in college. In that dream, I was repeating words over and over again. They seemed to be new words I had recently learned in class or in books. I was doing nothing but saying them over and over again.

How do I know that last's night's dream was a deep sleep dream? Ah, well I have an app on my phone that uses my heart rate to plot my sleep stages. When I woke up after being snagged, I looked at the app, and it said I had just been in deep sleep for the past 43 minutes.

In any case, the detailed appearance of daffodils must be important to my brain. We must not forget any daffodil details. Someone may ask me to identify a daffodil later, and I wouldn't want to be embarrassed if I forgot.

In any case, here are photos of various recent daffodils in bloom.

Narcissus x intermedius, probably the smallest daffodil flowers I've seen. The cups are smaller than a paper hole punch.

'Kedron' - it was one of my favorites last year, and this year is even better. The flowers, which were abundant, have lasted for weeks, and even through rain, frost, and wind while staying upright. I love this one. A definite keeper.

'Falconet' - a new one for me this year. I hope it becomes a keeper. The flowers are lovely, long-lasting, have a great fragrance, and the stems keep coming up in succession. It's a Wister Award winner, so I didn't doubt its excellence.

Narcissus bulbocodium, the hoop-petticoat daffodil. It's been flowering in this lawn for over ten years, though it is shy to flower sometimes.

Narcissus bulbocodium