Let me go! Turn me loose!

All this long winter I've been pondering the need to de-select daylily seedlings and give myself fewer opportunities or dead ends to think about when the pressure's on and the pollen is fluffy.  I shed about fifty of them in February on the Lily Auction and then the itch to simplify hit me again last night and I put this one up for bidding.

This is seedling 09-21 from Forestlake Ragamuffin x Belle of Ashwood.  When I look at this picture I see the form of Belle of Ashwood combined with the orange toothy edge from Forestlake Ragamuffin.  In fact, it has some edge properties from both parents, and the orange on the edge is intensified.  Unfortunately, I succeeded only in creating a more interesting face than I saw on either parent.  I failed to put this flower on a tall, well-branched scape, though it grows vigorously.

But as interesting as one might find this, I just don't want to find out where this might lead.  I'm not enthusiastic about the possibilities.  Yesterday I heard it sing to me, "Let me go, let me go, let me go, lover."  This morning it sang, "Turn me loose....I'm gonna get a thousand kicks and kiss a thousand chicks, so turn me loose!"  One confirmation of my disinterest in this is the plain fact that I've walked right past it and not grabbed the pollen in the last four seasons.

There's another one in the keeper bed that sings, "lover, come back to me!"

This is 10-74 from Desiree x Belle of Ashwood.  The flower is 5.5", the scape 35" tall.  It's dormant, a mid-season bloomer with 5 branches and 36 buds.  The halo around the throat suggests the potential for breeding a patterned blue eye, something I haven't tried with this one yet.

The color drew me to this one.  It reminds me of a color that might have been fashionable for women's evening wear or the boudoir back in the nightclubbing era of the late 1930s or early 1940s, which I must imagine, as I wasn't around to see these garments first-hand.  I don't mind the brassy edge on the petals, though I certainly would not want to see any more of it.  I would prefer to see a platinum edge or a white one on this color.

Hybridizing is a romantic chase.  Nobody wants to chase all the girls.  You just chase the one or the ones who work their way into your nature and say or do something irresistible.