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So for now, here it is, in all its glory, a sweet little oyster just waiting for me to eat it after I drizzle the lemon on it.

It was delicious- a guilty pleasure in the studio.

The long, bright, slanting primary light was from the east, a secondary, diffused source came in from a south facing window with shade trees.

  In Gloucester, they also have old daffodils because it used to be the site of major daffodil growing in the U.S.  Daffodils are everywhere, in the fields and ditches, and of course, in the scores old beds of houses like Lowland Cottage, where the bulbs had gotten so thick that they were literally in layers on top of each other.  Come April, there's a Daffodil Festival, and the light sparkles because there's water everywhere, and the daffodils catch it, glinting gold from every nook.

   In any case, Hally needed to get rid of some hundreds of these bulbs (you wouldn't have believed it unless you'd seen it- they were tangle in mats), so that the remaining ones could gain a little room to stretch out, and to facilitate the addition of a little variety in the beds.  So, one very cold and wet October morning, my best friend and I hit the road and drove to Gloucester to dig out some of Hally's daffodils.  We hunkered down in front of a small bed, perhaps three feet deep and ten feet long and began spading bulbs, buckets worth, most smaller than a nickel. With no idea of what they'd look like in the spring. We came away sodden and too muddy to even consider sitting down inside the cottage, but Hally brought us hot tea before we loaded up our stash and headed back home, where we separated and planted the bulbs and bulblets for hours.

   Hally died within a year of that muddy afternoon; I only saw her a few times afterward.  Lowland Cottage is on the market, I hear, with all of it's three hundred year old trees, a view of the river,  and of course, thousands of daffodils, some just like this one.  Sweetly surprising. I have tried to ascertain a variety, but to no avail, and no matter- they're Hallydills as far as I'm concerned.

P.S.  If you are a lover of daffodils, you might want to visit Brent and Becky's Bulbs in Gloucester, or in the ethers.   They are purveyors of many fine jonquils, both heirloom and evolving varieties.