April 8, 2018 So how late is this Spring?

Is this Spring?
It has been so cold. Snow is still in the forecast.
My, oh my, it was cold. Friday got to a high of about 32, and there was a 25 mph wind from the...you guessed it...the north. I was cold in my winter coat. I had my winter hat on and my hood on top of that. There was no gardening after work.
Two nights this week  have tested the cell structure of all plants that are  out of the ground at this point. On both Thursday morning and Saturday morning it got down to 16 degrees, in the thermometer on the front porch. I can report that I found little plant damage. Maybe a few flowers were toasted. Mostly the plants just hunkered down and waited.  It has been cool enough for the last month that everything that is up, is tough.

But in between the cold and the wind there were a few times this week when I was able to get out and do a few things in the garden. I got a big load of wood chips a few weeks ago.

Path work is starting. I have many garden paths. They are all lined with bricks. Over time the bricks get disorganized. Spring path work involves moving the bricks, cleaning the edges, putting the bricks back, and putting down fresh wood chips.

I received more special bloodroot this week. (Some double, some giant, and some "pink".) The ones that were still dormant were planted outside. Those that were already growing were put into pots and will stay inside for a little bit.
I have started some of the de Caen anemones in pots inside. There is suppose to be warmer weather coming in a few days. I will try to directly plant the rest directly in the garden. We will see.

When the wind is quiet, and the sun is out, with a winter coat on, it is still magical this time of year. With the cool weather, it seems like everything remains much the same, day after day. The snowdrops, aconite and crocuses continue to bloom. That is not so bad. We could have been stuck in January. (Actually someone suggested it felt like January.)

Part of the magic in the garden is finding new things if you look hard enough. (How deep is that?)
One late afternoon this week I noticed one part of the garden where there were hundreds of little red sprouts. What were those? Well, they were the mass of wild dogtooth violets emerging. They leave no space for much of anything else in about 15 square feet of garden.


Voting?

In the voting last week there was a tie. You liked the really purple crocus and the winter aconite in snow. Nice choices.

The full voting was:
Really purple crocus 9
Winter aconite in snow 9
Aconite group 6
White crocus with friend 5
Tricolor crocus with bee 4
Snowdrop in snow 1
Color spectrum 1

This week's all star voting subjects

For your voting this week I have something special. Call it all star weekend. I give you a contest between the winners of the contest over the years. The year or years the flower won is listed with the name. I did not include the winner from this year. Maybe you will remember some of these.


#1- Pink Waterlily- 2008

#2 Purple Siberian Iris-2009

#3 Pink Poppy 2016 and 2010

#4 Fiery Orchid cactus- 2017

#5 Leucojem trio-2011

#6 White waterlily-2012 and 2007

#7 So many crocuses-2013

#8 Double Bloodroot 2015 (2013 picture filling in for the 2014 picture that has been lost)

As there are so many great pictures you may vote for two.

Bonus section

Here are pictures from the last 6 springs. You can see for yourself what the garden was usually like on April 1. Looking at all of these I would say we are a little behind. Duh. It is not the latest spring we have had during that time.

Spring 2017

April 4, 2017

Anemone blandas

April 4, 2017

The daffodils usually are blooming by April 1.

April 4, 2017

April 1, 2017

One major barometer of spring is the star magnolia. It is about the first of the flowering trees to bloom.













Hellebores can be so wonderful.

Spring 2016

March 29, 2016

Pulmonaria is really nice. None so far this year.

April 3, 2016

April 3, 2016

April 3, 2016

I love primroses. I should find the space to grow more.
Anyone want some astilbe?











Single bloodroot blooms before the double variety.

Spring 2015

Spring of 2015 seemed late at the time. The aconite really only got started mid March. Sometimes the measurement is not so much when it starts, but how fast it goes from that point on. This year is an illustration of that.

April 4, 2015

April 5, 2015

April 5, 2015

This is corydalis. I think the little flowers this year have been nipped by the hard freezes.












Daffodils
No daffodils so far in 2018.

Spring 2014- the lost pictures

I have pictures from the garden going back to 2002.
At some point in 2014 I lost 6 months of pictures. It was from August 2013 to May 2014. Something happened with the computer. They just disappeared. I had the computer person look everywhere for them. There were no where to be found.

I did go back in the archive of this blog.  

On March 30, 2014 I wrote that the first aconite should bloom any time now, and today there was the first crocus.

April 7, 2014

Here was one picture that I was able to retrieve. By April 7 of 2014 there were crocuses.

Spring 2013

There were a few snowdrops in January and even some aconite in early February. But mostly spring waited until the middle of March. The pictures from early April seem about the same as I am seeing in the garden now.

April 4, 2013

This is the shelf in the Southeast corner of the house where there were/are Crown Imperial Fritillaria. They were further along than this year.

Spring 2012

That was the very very early Spring. Actually as I look back at that year I keep thinking that all the pictures were April Fools jokes. The entire Spring was 4-6 weeks early, as measured from every benchmark.

January 31, 2012

This was the first aconite in late January.

March 10, 2012

March 14, 2012

March 14, 2012

March 23, 2012

April 1, 2012

March 31, 2012

This is perhaps the most out of season picture I have ever taken. Yes, that is a blooming lilac. There is also green grass.

 Julia's Recipe

 A couple of dals

I have written about Indian cuisine, in which meatless cooking is a positive thing. One does not leave out the meat or chicken or fish. One cooks tasty things with lots of spices and flavor and, as it happens, no meat. According to the Internet, the word dal means legumes or an Indian dish made of legumes. Fair enough. There are as many kinds of dal as there are legumes. Some are made with chickpeas, some with tiny yellow lentils. This dal is quickly and easily with red lentils and just a few additional ingredients, and so it can be part of simple Indian dinner with basmati rice and a vegetable curry such as cabbage with tomatoes or cauliflower curry. And I have included a recipe for a second slightly more complicated dal, same technique, different spices and therefore different taste.

I started by rinsing 1 cups of red lentils and putting them into a pot with 3-1/2 cups of water with 1/2 teaspoon of turmeric.

I put the pot on the stove, brought it to a boil and then turned the heat down to simmer. Red lentils, I have learned, are brown lentils with their skins/hulls rubbed off. Really. You can try it with your own brown lentils. For this reason, red lentils cook even faster than brown lentils. Red lentils are sold at New Pioneer Food Co-op and, I suspect, at other well-stocked grocery stores. You could certainly use yellow lentils or brown lentils if red lentils are not available. Watch the cooking time. After about 20 minutes, the lentils were tender, and I added 1 teaspoon of salt to the pot. At that point, I heated up 3 tablespoons of vegetable oil (you could use ghee or butter or maybe coconut oil) in a little skillet. I added a big pinch of asafetida (good to have, but not essential, I think) and 1 teaspoon of cumin seeds and 2 teaspoons of red pepper flakes. I heated the spices until the red pepper flakes turned dark red. Then I stirred the oil and spice blend into the lentils, and it was done.

Here it is, ready to eat. Dal is thicker than soup. Kind of like stew. We ate it in small bowls ladled on top of a dollop of basmati rice. Or regular rice would be fine.

The second dal also used red lentils, but I also have made it with little yellow lentils (moog dal). The same order of operations was used: I rinsed about 1-1/3 cups of lentils; put them in a pot and added about 3-1/2 cups of water plus 1 teaspoon of salt. I used kosher. While the lentils were cooking, I assembled the spices: 1 teaspoon cumin seeds, 1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric, 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper, 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger, 1/2 teaspoon ground coriander, and 1/2 teaspoon of mustard seeds. Also 6 whole cloves and a little piece (about 1 inch) of stick cinnamon. Having whole spices in a dish is sort of like a culinary Easter egg hunt but not entirely in a good way; if you have ever bitten into a whole clove unawares, you know what I mean. I like to live on the edge. If you don't, use 1/2 teaspoon each ground cloves and ground cinnamon.

I melted 2 tablespoons of butter in a little skillet and then added the spice mixture until the spices were heated through and thoroughly blended. Then I checked the lentils, which were done in about 20 minutes. Red lentils cook fast. I poured the lentils into a serving bowl, a little soupy, a little stew-like. Then I poured the butter/spice blend all over the top and stirred just a bit.

And it was ready. Served in little bowls with rice.

Leftover dal is good cold or reheated. Basmati rice is not good cold; it gets hard and has to be reheated to be palatable. Something about the kind of starch. Regular rice (a/k/a medium grain rice) retains its texture when cold.

Odds and Ends

As we have been focused on its being cold, the days have continued to get longer. This morning, another clear and cold morning, down to 21, it was a little light out at 6 o'clock. We have passed the 13 hour mark of sunlight.


I leave you with the two day forecast. We are to expect from 2-4 inches of snow starting Sunday afternoon.

But by midweek there are 60's predicted, and even one 70, at the moment.
Did anyone think "fast forward"?
I am so looking forward to throwing a bunch of plants outside. So are the plants.

Stay warm.
Philip