Weather was cool and dry today. Great for being in the garden.Â
We breed for blue eyed daylilies and have several daylilies hybridized elsewhere that we have used in our program (Blue Desire and Bit of Blue were blooming today). Our blue eyed seedlings are at least as blue as any others we have seen. Today the colors were vivid. I suspect it was from the sky reflection (cloudless blue sky this morning) and the cooler temperatures (mid fifties this morning). I photographed everything in RAW format today and color corrected away from blue to get as accurate a color as possible. One way I check color is to look at the green foliage in the picture. If it has a blue tint to it, then the photograph is biased toward blue. Another trick I use is to use fill flash even though there is plenty of natural light. The fill flash is a clean white light and will take out some of the blue from the sky. Here are two seedlings photographed today:
908-3 is a Tet. Lavender blue baby seedling x Spring of Living Water – our 2011 introduction from Destined to See background. We like the blue eye pattern way out on the sepals. This was photographed with fill flash to reduce blue sky reflection.
Seedling 146-1 combines our Destined to See lines (Pleasing to the Eye and Grace Like Rain) with Blue Hippo.Â
We also saw some seedlings with white teeth today. One was one we held over from last year, 29-2. The dark eye and double edge came from a seedling (Cast Your Crown x Tears for Gus) crossed with a Heavens Proclaim seedling. With Julie Newmar in the background of Heavens Proclaim, we have genetics for teeth on both sides of the cross. Neither parent had white teeth so that is a bonus. I guess we are getting old when we are going back 3 and 4 generations to get to named daylilies that we did not hybridize. We think the white teeth and near black edge are a nice contrast.
The final seedling is a cross of two Heartbeat of Heaven (Emmerich) seedlings with Tears for Gus in the genetics as well. We love the clear color on this one – first bloom today.
