Daffodils

“When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.“
William Wordsworth

We always appreciate the efforts of neighbours who maintain attractive floral gardens that bring joy to all who stroll through the community. Although we have many trees and flowering bushes, we do not have a flower garden ourselves. Through trial and error, we had come to the conclusion that impatiens are the only flowers that don’t seem to mind our limited sun exposure and manage to survive the inevitable interest of our many voracious garden visitors.

However, since hope springs eternal, we decided to give daffodils a try his year. They bloom before the trees have all their leaves, and daffodils have a reputation for being unappetizing to squirrels, rabbits and raccoons. Our experiment was a success…

Not being gardeners by any definition, we just bought some bulbs based on the colourful pictures on the display in the garden centre. We were motivated by the possibility of a splash of colour coming from the raised garden box that had seen so many planting failures in previous years. To give the bulbs a chance last fall, we covered them with a net to deter the squirrels from digging them out, as they had done with all the other bulbs, herbs, and vegetables we had planted there before.

We learned from the website of the American Daffodil Society that there are up to 200 different daffodil species and subspecies and over 32,000 types of hybrids. The Society is dedicated to the promotion of research and education about all things to do with daffodils, and its website is very interesting and informative.

As the snow was melting and we saw our daffodils emerge from the ground, we thought it would be fun to document their growth. Although we have a good camera, it doesn’t have the inbuilt capability for time-lapse photography, which is essential for capturing a slow process like the growth of a flower over time. For this purpose, we purchased an inexpensive JJC Intervalometer, which connects to the camera and allows images to be captured at pre-set intervals.

With the camera set up beside a window overlooking the flower box, over 2,000 still images were taken over 22 days, at 3-minute intervals prior to blooming and every 6 minutes thereafter. When the stills were brought into our video editing application, each still was set to display for 1/10th of a second and the frame rate was increased to 319% of normal. The one-minute long video below is the product of this time consuming but enjoyable experiment.