mears garden: Week 8- January 14, 2018

Welcome to week 8 of the Winter Picture Contest.

It is now mid-January.
Here in Iowa City we had almost 48 hours earlier this week when the temperature stayed close to 40 degrees. What little snow cover we had almost disappeared. I walked though the backyard and thought about times that are just around the corner. With all that persistent cold however, the ground is still frozen solid. It will be a while before the first snowdrop pokes through.
But with the snow gone, I could just imagine that happening one of these weeks.

It is time to take a good look at all those houseplants. They have now been inside for almost 3 months in some cases.
We took the Christmas tree down this week. That meant that the first floor plants now have all that extra room. The crotons are doing well so far. I should probably give them a mid-winter boost of fertilizer and maybe some bug preventatives. They still have another 3 months to go before they can go outside. Is that right? 3 months from now will be the middle of April. Certainly at that point some houseplants can think about venturing outside.

With that basic understanding of plant math, I am ready to pronounce that we are at the mid-winter point.
Here are some more benchmarks:
February 2 (Groundhog day) - 19 days
February 13 (First day for pitchers and catchers report to baseball spring training) - 30 days
March 20- first day of spring- 65 days
April 15 - 91 days
November 6 (Election day) - 296 days

The garden catalogues are arriving in the mail these days. While I try to buy my plants locally, there are some plants that are just not available locally. I really need to get more of (fill in the blank). There are so many things to think about in that sentence. I was looking at all the new coneflowers. The reds and the yellows and the pink fluffy ones. There is one called Tomato Soup. (It is red.) Wouldn't it be grand to have several dozen of those bright red ones? They could be sprinkled in with the daylilies. Maybe I should get more cypripedium orchids. One company will sell me bare-root dormant plants in the spring. That means they would grow this spring. How about getting just 2-3 more?

But for now I should think about pictures.

Last week in the contest

In last week's voting the winner by a nose was the Hoya. I will give it some fertilizer as a reward. I do not think in all the weeks and years I have been doing this contest I have ever had a winner that was right here in the room with me as I was writing about it.
Here it is.

I do encourage you to look at the link to other hoya flowers in last week's blog.

Here is the full vote, showing the first day totals and then the weekly totals.

Hoya Hindu Rope plant 8-11
C Giesel 7-9
Pink Poppy 6-9
Purple pasque flower 5-5
Frilly daylily 3-5

total 29-39

The runner up in Week 7 (and there was a tie) did not make the cut for a wild card slot. Maybe next year.
At this point we have had 7 weeks to look at the second place finishers. 3 "wild cards" will make it through to the next round.
So far here are the top three:
Week 1 Double Bloodroot 31%
Week 3 Iceland Poppy/Cattleya 30%*
Week 5 Yellow Orchid Cactus 26%

Runner ups that out of the running at this point:
Week 4- tie for second between anemone blanda and allium 25%
week 7- hardy orchid and pink poppy 23%
week 5- tulip trio and zinnia 23%
Week 2 multi-colored zinnia 20%

* In Week 3 there was a tie for first. Both of those will advance automatically. For that reason only two actual second place finishers will advance.

Pictures for Week 8

#1 Orange Iceland poppy
May 13, 2017

Iceland poppies are special. I grow them from seed. I should start some more this month. I put them out in mid April. They will then bloom for several months. The heat of the summer does them in.

The white one you saw in Week 3. Here is orange.

#2 Yellow Hellebore
April 4, 2017

Hellebores are perhaps the first non-bulb to bloom in the spring. Sometimes they bloom so "early" that they bloom at Thanksgiving or even one year, at Christmas.
In England, some are called the Christmas Rose. Different climate.

They do hang down, making it sometimes hard to see the flowers. This lovely yellow one is by the front sidewalk. It had a seedling several years ago, which bloomed this past spring.

Please look at the bonus pictures to see the color spectrum.

#3 Epimedium Flamingo Dancer
April 19, 2017

This is E. Flamingo Dancer.
Tiny flowers.
Wonderful foliage.

Some spread quite a bit.
All have the wonderful little flowers.

#4 Cattleya orchid Arctic Snow
December 31, 2017

This is the second cattleya orchid in the contest this winter. (There was a pink one in week #3 that is advancing to the next round.) I now have 3 of these cattleya plants.

This particular one has been blooming for a month in our living room. There are four flowers on its one stem. A second stem started to open yesterday. I expect this one plant will have continuous bloom for several months.Did I mention it is fragrant? What a joy it has been this holiday season.

What is remarkable is that it bloomed in June-July, outside. I had originally selected a picture from that bloom period for the contest. This picture came along and I made the swap. For other pictures of this plant, including the one that was going to be in the contest, please see the bonus section down below.

#5 Japanese Anemone Honorine Jobert
September 16, 2017

It is time for an artistic closeup.
Japanese anemones are an important part of the fall garden.
This is the wonderful center of the white one called Honorine Jobert.
I wish I could enter a group of three pictures in the contest. For this anemone I would group a picture of the buds, the full flower, and this closeup.
Please check out the bonus section.

There you have the contestants for this week. Please vote. Have a friend vote. Have your children vote.
Enjoy the color and the beauty that was, and that will come again, in better times.

Bonus Section

This first picture of the white cattleya contestant was taken on June 16, 2017.

This picture one was taken on July 12. The orchid bloomed for at least a month outside this summer.

Here are other pictures of this great orchid.
I find it interesting to compare the quality of the pictures depending on whether they were outside or inside. Actually taking pictures inside was a challenge sometimes because the flowers were at times in bright sun. The inside pictures somehow seemed almost silky.

Here are more anemone pictures.

This is the picture from which the cropped closeup was taken.
I do like the combination of flowers and stems.

Here is another anemone peaking out from all those stems.
Theses plants do clump up. In fact they can dominate an area. They certainly keep the weeds out. You do have to be careful or they will overwhelm their neighbors.

This is one of my favorite pictures for the year. I would put it in the contest but I know it could not compete with all the pictures full of color. I should have a week for not-flower pictures.
I like how everything is a little furry, from the leaves to the buds to the stems.

These pink anemones bloom first.
Some anemones will be blooming from late August until November.

This pink variety is rather wild. As I observed about the Monsella tulip, some flowers have button down shirts. Some do not.

Here you can see the very orderly white flower along with a bud cluster.

Here are a few more Iceland Poppy pictures. You saw more in Week 3.
They really need to be shown as large as I can give you.

I love how there was this mutation in the color on this flower. Another flower on this same plant was just like that.

Hellebores
I have a bunch. They make many seedlings. It then takes 3-4 years for a seedling to get to be big enough to bloom.

It seems that the contestants this week just have so many friends.
Here are more epimedium pictures.

Julia's Recipe

Pasta e fagioli

Apparently this is a real Italian dish, one of those thrifty peasant dishes using basic ingredients present in most all kitchens. But I am not a real Italian (or any kind of Italian, actually) so I use the recipe from the original Vegetarian Epicure, the classic 1972 vegetarian cookbook. As those of you familiar with this cookbook can attest, Anna Thomas, the author, is more interested in how things taste than many of the earnest vegetarian cookbook writers of the same era. Things that taste good are better than things that are sincere and don't. We have made this recipe, which is not only vegetarian but also vegan, for many years. In fact, I wrote up a step-by-step version for the children when they were in late grade school/ junior high and made dinner once a week for the family.

The ingredient line-up is (mostly) pictured here: onions, carrots, celery, garlic, basil, oregano, diced tomatoes, and cooked navy beans. Not pictured: salt, pepper, olive oil and 1 lb. of medium pasta shells.

I started the night before by cooking about 1-1/3 cups of dry navy beans. I rinsed them off and put them in a biggish saucepan with enough water to cover with beans with about 2 inches of water. I added two whole peeled cloves of garlic, 1 bay leaf, 2 tablespoons of olive oil and about 1 teaspoon of salt. I cooked the beans until they were done (determined by tasting), which took a couple of hours.

You could also use 2-15 ounce cans of navy beans or cannellini beans, and nobody will know (or care). At any rate, have your beans at the ready. I ended up with about 3-1/2 cups of cooked beans. I kept the cooking liquid as well along with the beans. If you use canned beans, you will also use the liquid.

This is a picture of the big red pot full of water in which shell pasta would eventually cook.

I started the day-of-eating process by peeling and chopping 1 large onion into a dice, peeling and cutting 4 smallish carrots into circles and washing and cutting 3 medium ribs of celery into half-circles. I ended up with about 1-1/2 cups of chopped onion and 1 cup each of carrots and celery.

I put about 2 tablespoons of olive oil into a large skillet and added the vegetables. I cooked them over low-to-medium heat until they were soft. No need to have them brown.

Then I added 2 cloves of smushed garlic, 1 teaspoon of oregano, 1/2 teaspoon of basil, 1/2 teaspoon of black pepper and 1/2 teaspoon of salt and stirred it around.

All of this cooking and stirring took about 10 minutes.

Next I added 1-15 ounce can of diced tomatoes and all of the beans with their liquid. I would estimate there was about 1 cup of bean liquid. A bit more (up to 2 cups) is fine; less is not - add water.

I brought the bean mixture to a simmer, lowered the heat, covered it and let it cook for about 20-25 minutes. In the meantime, I brought the water to a boil and cooked a 1 lb. box of medium shells.

When the shells were done, I drained them and returned them to the big enamel pot (off the heat). Then I added the bean mixture to the shells and dinner was ready.

If you want the dish to be soupier, add more liquid - water, vegetable stock, white wine, tomato juice and cook less pasta, say 1/2 lb. rather than 1 lb.

Here it is: a big pot of goodness. It would serve 6 - 8 hungry folks. We add parmesan cheese at the table, but we're not vegan. Use vegan cheese or leave cheese out altogether if you are.

If you have gluten issues, use Boles corn pasta. I have had their elbow macaroni which is very good. Any shape pasta works in this dish; we like shells. I would not use spaghetti or any spaghetti-like pasta. Shape pasta with its nooks and crannies holds the sauce.

As is so often the case, we have leftovers which we eat for lunch, warmed up or cold. I do not advise freezing pasta e fagioli leftovers as I think freezing would do bad things to the texture.

Odds and Ends

I learned a new word used in describing flowers. It is "panicle."
Here was the sentence in a description of E. Flamingo Dancer.
"Each full panicle of bright flowers arches gracefully out over the beautifully speckled spring foliage."
"Panicle", is defined as a "loose, branching cluster of flowers, as in oats."

Here is the orchid picture this week.