April 27, 2025 - the last time

 We are so sad to write that this will be the last post. Philip died suddenly on Thursday morning - he got up early as he usually did, had a cup of coffee, read an article about penguins in National Geographic, and went down to the basement. He must have done some gardening puttering too, dividing Shirley poppies or moving around some big crotons. Then he transferred a load of Agape Café laundry the dryer, and apparently, had a massive heart attack and died instantly. Julia found him a little later when she went looking for him to go on a walk.

 
Philip was a remarkable person in many ways. He was a fine lawyer-- an advocate for people who often had difficulty finding sympathetic counsel-- an avid gardener and photographer, and fundraiser for local foodbanks. His death leaves a hole that will be difficult to fill. A full obituary that attempts to capture some of his splendor will follow.
 
There will be a memorial service May 31^st at the Lodge at Terry Trueblood Recreation Area in Iowa City at 1 p.m. Details will be forthcoming. We will post those details here but please RSVP via this link if that’s doable for you so we can put out enough chairs. We know he was well loved.
 
The plant sale will continue through the summer, and visitors continue to be welcome in the garden. If you want to help tend to his amazing garden this season, please be in touch and we will get you on an email list to get that coordinated. We will need many helpers.
 
If you want to make a donation in Philip’s memory, the Coralville Community Food Pantry or CommUnity food pantry in Iowa City would be appropriate choices.
 
Here are a few pictures of the beauty this week, taken by Philip and others of us this week in the amazing spring weather.
 

 

As he would say, pray for peace in so many places.
 
Give thanks for your loved ones and hold them tight.
 
Make good trouble.
 
Be kind.
 
If you’re in the neighborhood, please come by. Pull a dandelion if you’re so inclined – there’s a dandelion sticker at the foot of the kitchen stairs.
 
With love,
Julia, Maggie and Katie

April 20, 2025- It is bluebell time

It is bluebell time. And with a little moisture and cool weather the bluebells should last a while.

Yesterday was a wonderful day for gardening. It was in the 50's, and was mostly overcast. We had several small rains earlier in the week which meant things did not seem too dry.

In fact the sunny garden plot opened a little early this year.  I went over Wednesday, after work and planted beets, arugula, and spinach. I knew some rain was coming, and it came. To add to the early vegtable trio,  I then took over the smaller pots of lettuce, adding them to the 1/3 of the plot that is now planted.

Digging up plants for the foof bank sale is in full swing. I potted cristata iris, and some blackberry lilies (which are really an iris.) I already had cyress spurge, baptista, celendine poppies, and other dwarf iris.

I potted up some Montana hosta. It brought back memories. I first started potting up hosta from the garden about 40 years ago. Because of deer I did spray the pots, now sitting in the back driveway. That is right near the deer path. I also went around the garden spraying Plantskydd on all the hosta. (You do not have to worry much until the hosta leaf bursts open.)

I had the usual gardening rotation of potting something, raking the last of the leaf places, and just to show there was not enough work to do, I started digging dandilions.

The little dwarf iris  started this week. There were about 7-8 varities blooming this weekend, including the two iris  in the featured pictures from this week. 

Last Week

In a close contest the hellebore came out ahead.

This Week

I have another vote for you.

#1 Black Hellebore

#2 Little iris with bluebells

#3  Daffodil Tahiti

#4 Little white iris with blue beard

#5 Daffodils with bluebells

#6 White daffodil with red center

It has been a good season for daffodils. That means it has been cool. Now the bluebells have joined them, and with some rain today the garden will be at its peak. 

Right Now

Not all pictures can be featured. Here are some of the rest.

Regularl bluebells actually start out pink. 

The clumps of daffodils are good this year. The fact we have not had any hard rains helps. A hard rain can splash on the daffodils which does not make for good pictures.

The double daffodils are mostly late blooming. 

The epimedium are blooming. This is Cherry Tart.

This plant was responsible for an "oh my" yesterday. I knew I had at least a dozen tree peony seedlings. I had no idea that this one had a bud. The other two seedlings that I thought might bloom, fizzled. But there this one was and it certainly has a bud.

This is the white bluebell. It is a rare nutation that to the best of my knowledge is not available in commerce. 

The dogwood is about to bloom.  

Julia's recipe

Applesauce pie

I was thinking about applesauce the other day. The occasion was the imminent delivery of half a pig. We buy half a pig every year or so from a farmer we know. It is processed at a meat locker in Sully, Iowa which some of you may recall as part of the twin cities of Lynnville and Sully west of Grinnell. I needed to make room in the freezer. I make and freeze applesauce during apples-at-the-farmers-market season, and I had some still in the freezer. So I thought why not make applesauce pie? There's pumpkin or squash pie, so why not use applesauce instead of pumpkin puree? I was not prepared to wing it, and I found a recipe on the internet website "Food.com."

The ingredients:

1 9" pie crust;

2 eggs;

1 cup sugar;

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, melted;

2 tablespoons flour

1 teaspoon vanilla;

2 tablespoons lemon juice; and 

1 cup thick applesauce.

Philip made me a piecrust. I prebaked it sort of. I baked the empty piecrust (lined with a piece of foil and weighted down with dried beans) in a 350 oven for about 10 minutes. Then I took it out of the oven. I took the foil and beans out of the piecrust, and I pricked the bottom of the crust with a fork 20 times or so. And I put it back in the oven for another 10 minutes. At that point, the crust was pale tan and had shrunk a bit. 

The point is to avoid the dreaded soggy crust. Pricking the bottom may seem counterproductive. But it works and pricking the crust keeps it from ballooning up in the second 10 minutes of baking (which the weights had done earlier on).

Okay. Next a word about applesauce. Homemade applesauce is usually thinner than commercial. So I poured my applesauce (about 2-1/2 cups to begin with) into a mesh strainer that was resting on top of a small mixing bowl. I stirred the applesauce around and let it drip. I ended up with 1 cup of thick applesauce and 1-1/2 cups of pretty tasty apple juice. So whatever kind of applesauce you're using, use a mesh strainer over a bowl to allow any liquid to drain.

With the piecrust out of the oven and the applesauce strained, it was time to put it all together.

I put the eggs, sugar, flour, vanilla and lemon juice in a mixing bowl. 

 

Then I added the applesauce and whisked it all together. 

I melted the stick of butter and let it cool for 10 minutes. 

I whisked the butter in and the filling was done. 

I use salted butter, so I did not add any salt. If you use unsalted butter, add a little salt - maybe 1/8 teaspoon.

Into the piecrust. I always bake pies with a rimmed baking sheet underneath. In case of drips and for ease of getting the pie in and out of the oven.

I baked the pie at 350 degrees for about 40 minutes. I started testing for doneness after 30 minutes. If it makes little waves when you pull the baking sheet out, it's not done. 

But it may not be fully set when it is done. Use a knife to test. If a knife stuck in the middle of the pie comes out wet but without any goop, it's done. If there's goop on the knife, it's not quite done. 

The filling will set beautifully as the pie cools. 

Out of the oven. After the pie had cooled to room temperature, it sliced into neat pieces. It was good with a scoop of vanilla ice cream or plain. I think it would be great with a dollop of whipped cream, like pumpkin pie. 

Philip says we should add it to the Thanksgiving array. And he's right. 

Odds and Ends

We have deer. We have rabbits. We have the occasional duck. We do not have giant rodents. Do you know about capybaras?

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/17/world/americas/argentina-capybaras-vasectomies.html

The garden is a great escape. As I dig the dandelions I do not think about war or other ways people are not getting along. The list of things I do not think about is long.

I help feed people. At my day job I try to lift burdens on my clients.

But I often ask myself if that is enough.

This country is in a lot of trouble, and it is not just the price of eggs.

The annoying columnist David Brooks just wrote this...in a public column.

"It’s time for a comprehensive national civic uprising. It’s time for Americans in universities, law, business, nonprofits and the scientific community, and civil servants and beyond to form one coordinated mass movement. Trump is about power. The only way he’s going to be stopped is if he’s confronted by some movement that possesses rival power."

Happy Easter

Pray for peace.

Philip

April 13, 2025-a truly busy time with lots of good pictures

 

It was a busy week at the office. We had computer problems, inclulding having to get new versions of some of our programs. Where did those downloads go?

We had a freeze Monday night but nothing was really damaged. The main casualty were the tulip trees the completely turned brown over night. Oour star magnolia was not hurt. I covered the big clump of cypripedium orchids in the back yard. It probably was not neccesary.

For many reasons I did not have much time for the garden during the week.

I made up for it yesterday. It was probably a six hour garden day. For part of  part of that time I got out the chair from the back garage and just sat  and took it all in. It was mostly sunny and got up to close to 70 by the end of the day. The coat came off first. Then the sweatpants. 

I came up with a rotation. I raked sections of the garden that still needed it. I potted plants into bigger pots. I potted plants into pots for the sale. We passed the $500 today.

Julia came home from doing taxes at the office to spend a good 30 minutes picking up sticks. That did require a fair amount of bending which she will fell today.

But so much was/is going on. The bloodroot and the first windflowers opened. By the end of the day the yellow species tulips were opening for the first time. They were opening for the first time in various parts of the garden. 

I was potted up cyress spurge. It grows everywhere in a non invasive way. I consider something invasive if you cannot get rid of it. In amoungst the spurge were dozens of lupin seedlings. I let the lupine go to seed.  It then seeds all around where the old plants were. Mostly lupines are only reliable for 2-3 years at the most. So seedlings are required to maintain the lupine glory.

The daffodils are out. So are the hyacinths. I really should think about splashing hyacinths around the yard, particularly in the front parkway.

Last week

You liked these two  crocus pictures

The full vote was

A vote for this week

There was so much going on yesterday. I can make an entire set of great pictures just from that day.

For you voting pleasure

#1 Double Bloodroot

#2 Modern Art Daffodil

#3 Trillium

#4 Daffodil without name

#5 Fancy Hellebore  Sun Flare

I got this fancy hellebore from a Hellebore nursery 3 years ago. It was a small plant then. It is now big enough to bloom. The next step is to get to be a clump.

Other pictures from Right Now

This next picture shows deer footprints. They do tend to stay on the paths, until they go off the path to find a hosta or a daylily.

I am rethinking the use of hyacinths. That is in a good way.

I really want more primroses.

These are the first species tulips, that bloomed in 3-4 places yesterday for the first time.

This shows the results of some really good stick work.

These tasty morels will need some deer spray.

Julia's recipe

Portuguese cookies 

I ran across this recipe in the Iowa City Press-Citizen for Portuguese butter cookies called, I am told, Raivas de Aveiro. Not Michael Knock, the usual food guy. Just a random recipe. The dough is simple to make. It's the technique for forming the cookies that's unusual - not hard, just unusual. And a bit reminiscent of childhood.

The ingredients:

1/2 cup chilled butter;

10 tablespoons white sugar (aka 1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons);

3 eggs;

3 cups flour;

1-1/4 teaspoon cinnamon; and

1/4 teaspoon salt.

I only used 1/4 teaspoon of salt because I used salted butter. If you use unsalted butter, use 1/2 teaspoon salt.

Interestingly, the butter in this recipe was to be cold. So I took a stick out of the refrigerator and cut it into little cubes.

I used my stand mixer because the recipe told me to. And because a stand mixer can actually successfully combine cold butter and sugar.

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I added the sugar. I mixed the ingredients on medium-low speed until they were combined. Not all the way to creamed (that is, not one homogeneous mass).

Then I added the eggs, one at a time, mixing each one in. 

Then I added the salt and cinnamon and flour. More mixing.

Here is the lump of dough.

I turned the oven on to 350 degrees, and I started the process of forming the cookies. 

I used this pastry mat to form the cookies. It's meant to be used to roll out pie dough. Hence the concentric circles for different size pies. 

I used it because I needed a big surface to roll out the dough.

I cut the dough in half and rolled each half into a log about a foot long. Then I cut each log into 12 more or less equal pieces. 

Then I rolled each of the 24 little lumps into a skinny snake about 20 inches long. Like play dough. 

This is why I used this mat. I sprinkled a little flour on the mat and rolled away. Snakes!

If one of your snakes breaks, just stick the pieces together - which I did on a couple of my snakes.

The recipe said it was easier to make if you own a pasta making machine. I don't. If you do, then feed bigger lumps of dough through the machine to make sheets. Then feed the sheets through the fettucine attachment and you have something like snakes. 

I twisted each snake into a shape. Random squiggles. Apparently sometimes called "awkward flowers."

I have some reusable baking sheets, and I used them. You could use parchment. The cookies are prone to stick. 

These are on their way into the oven. 

I made 24 cookies. I baked them for 13-15 minutes, flipping the cookie sheets, front to back and switching shelves top to bottom after 7 minutes.

Out of the oven. I let them cool on the cookie sheets for a few minutes. Then I moved them to cooling racks. 

They were crisp on the outside and kind of soft on the inside. A little bit sweet and a little bit cinnamon-y. And fun to make. 

Odds and ends

I saw this article about Trillium and the ants.

https://www.bleedingheartland.com/2022/08/31/iowa-wildflower-wednesday-the-ant-and-the-trillium/?fbclid=IwY2xjawJl2TBleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHj5Ca5nxhhwHGCJOvjwXMbx_3d5PDR0ZDeeZBr2G_8m-xg2pH1Vrp2YqZ_9l_aem_Uot4EQHfbvzZINUIhHgazA

As if I did not have enough to do, the Chadek Park garden plot just opened for business. I went and bought some beet seed. I need to go and see how the soil is, without a till. I really should get some of the early stuff planted.

The country is still in a mess. The garden is a good escape. 

Pray for peace in so many places. Wars get pushed from the headlines but people still are dying.

If you are in the neighborhood please come by. I promise to get the last of the leaves raked. 

Philip