A sublime pairing

I love this piece by W. F. Bach. The pairing of the harpsichord with the fortepiano really allows each voice to stand out. And gosh, that fortepiano has me lost in a sea of longing.

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

'Orange Comet'

I am a sucker for the Cyclamineus daffodils. With their oversized cups, reflexed tepals, and nodding flowers, they just get me. If you want to die of cuteness overload, do a Google image search for the species itself, Narcissus cyclamineus. Unfortunately, I haven't had much luck with the Cyclamineus daffodils past the first year. I think they like cooler, moister climates than mine. They don't thrive on the intense summer bakings like the Jonquilla daffodils do. In any case, I've only tried them a couple of times before, and never in pots. This year I've tried 'Orange Comet', a hybrid from Brent & Becky's bulbs. I loved taking pictures of this one.

Guess whom I took to work with me?

Narcissus ‘Diamond Ring’

If I ever breed one of these bulbocodium daffodils, I might name it ‘Gramophone’, if it isn’t copyrighted or taken. 

John My Beloved

It was a perfect week to stumble upon this version of one of my favorite Sufjan songs.

Pro 400H

Fujifilm Pro 400H is a new film I've tried. At first, it was frustrating for me. Magenta, green, and cyan are very strong. Colors are very pastel. It seemed like everything was muted or muddy. I wondered if I exposed it wrongly. I tried to err on the side of overexposure, but things looked underexposed. When I scanned them in, though, I found things I liked about it. It has a sensitive look; not quite what I was aiming for, but lovely in its own right.

Buckwheat tree

Buckwheat tree

Tulipa clusiana 'Lady Jane' in dappled sun

Tulipa clusiana 'Lady Jane' opening in morning light

Narcissus 'Bell Song', a pinkish Jonquilla daffodil

Bluets in the woods

It works nicely on people. I think I'll use it mostly for portraits in the future.

Lucy swinging

Lucy

And more shots:

Rosa chinensis 'Mutabilis', new foliage and first blooms of the year

Thurlow Dam in Tallassee, last Friday

There were more photos, but I didn't have time to scan them yet.

'Princeps' 'Ice Follies', and 'Gigantic Star'

'Princeps' is one of the oldest daffodil cultivars, dating from before 1830. It was probably selected from a wild Dutch narcissus, and is possibly the same as Narcissus gayi. Reading about it just now, on Daffseek, I see it a diploid, having 14 chromosomes, which is the number of chromosomes most wild daffodils have. I wish I had thought to look this up earlier. I might have tried to breed it with other diploids. Alas, it didn't set seed for me. At has a nice fragrance, like many trumpet daffodils.

'Princeps' 

'Princeps'

Next up is what I believe to be 'Ice Follies', a more modern but still classic daffodil. It's a large cup daffodil from 1953. I found these growing in the woods near my grandfather's old house.

'Ice Follies' (probably)

And, finally, 'Gigantic Star', a trumpet daffodil more than a century away from 'Princeps'. It's from 1960.

'Gigantic Star'

'Gigantic Star' is one of the daffodils I planted in fall of 2016. So far it seems permanent. I have it in part sun and ideally would move it to full sun. The stems elongate too much in shade and then the enormous flowers cause them to flop over.