When it was 20 degrees, we thought that was cold.
When it was zero, we thought that was cold.
Now we are well on our way to what should be the coldest of the cold.
But we have been here before.
We are from Iowa.
We put on warm clothes.
We mostly stay inside.
We get out the heavy duty quilt.
We notice how much light there still is at 5, after work.
We think about warmer times.
The Picture contest
Your winner last week, in Week 8, in a convincing way was the...asclepias.
It was never close. In fact this picture became the first winner all season to get at least 50% of the vote.
Here was the final vote.
I have another great field for you this week. I would be surprised if any picture got 50% this week. With pictures from May, June, July and 2 from September, the contestants come from across the garden year.
Week 9
#1 Orange Asiatic Lily (June 22, 2018)
Asiatic lilies set the table for high summer.
Here you have some great orange, with just the right amount of rain for the best picture.
Did I mention the spots? Spots are good.
#2 Little forget me nots- Brunnera (May 17, 2018)
These little flowers are so cheery. What they also are is 'tiny.'
Partly for that reason they are new to the contest.
The perennial is called Brunnera. It is described as a "ground cover in dappled shade." Perfect. That describes most of my garden. I grow them under the white crab apple trees by the back garage. They have been rather hardy and have spread a little. They bloom in late spring.
This particular plant might be Brunnera macrophylla, known as "Siberian bugloss". Nice name. They are in the family Boraginaceae, with the genus being brunnera. There is also a genus myosotis, which is another plant with flowers called forget-me-nots.
#3 Lilium Triumphator (July 1, 2018)
This smooth flower has been in the garden for a decade.
Many of the variety of lilium will cross with each other.
This is a cross between a longiflorum (Easter lily) with an Oriental lily.
Did you know that you can plant these lilies in the early spring and they will likely bloom that year? I just received an ads for a spring sale.
#4 Night blooming cereus (September 2, 2018)
This is the Night Blooming Cereus. I have several varieties. This is a newer one for me. I have 4-5 blooming size plants of this variety that I acquired in 2017. The one I have had for years has many blooms all at one time. I think it is the more well known variety. Several times a year it will have as many as 10 flowers that bloom all at the same time.
This variety seems to have just one flower every once in a while. That meant that with 3-4 big plants hanging in the garden, I had flowers quite often.
I particularly liked this picture with the other plant in the background.
There will be more in the bonus section.
It really does bloom at night, opening when the sun goes down. This variety, unlike the other one, will stay open until there is morning light, allowing for picture taking.
All these NBC's are related to the other orchid cacti, all of which are related to the Christmas cactus.
They grow in partial shade, but do have to come in the house for the winter.
#5 White Zinnia with speckles (September 23, 2018)
Doesn't sun on a plant enhance the photograph?
I have really enjoyed growing zinnias the last few years. These speckled ones in 2018 were stars this past year.
There is a spot by the front sidewalk that gets morning sun. It gets that dappled shade the rest of the time. That seems to be enough.
I plant them from seed in late spring. They then will be relatively fresh in the fall. They last until frost. When I know the killing frost is going to happen I can cut and bring the flowers inside where they last for almost a week.
Vote away.
If there is more than one person who wants to vote, you can use the poll, close the webcite, and come back and vote again. I should also add there is no age requirement. I encourage children to be interested in the garden. I would encourage them to vote in the contest as well. I hope my grandson will know what an orchid is before he is 5.
Bonus pictures
I spent some time looking back through many years of pictures looking for the alpine forget-me-nots. I found this picture from 2008. It think it was taken near Cottonwood Pass in Colorado. That was close to 10,000 feet.I miss going to the western mountains and finding flowers in the snow. We should add it to the places to visit again list. Most of the pictures below are from Colorado that trip in 2008. The more I looked at these pictures the more I realized that they needed to be big pictures for you. In fact the flowers at that altitude are really short.
There is no better moment than finding a wild orchid. When it happens at elevation it is extra special.
This is a calypso orchid.
We found it in Rocky Mountain National Park.
Those Parks are so special. We should resolve that they should never ever be non funded again.
As I think about it there would probably be a longer list of such agencies.
More Night Blooming Cereus
I really love how the pistil is red.
Zinnias
This picture was in the contest in Week 1.
Julia's recipe
Tuscan bean soup
We first had this hearty soup at Estera's house in Connecticut. It featured white cannellini beans, bits of sausage, kale and cream. I am sure there are real recipes, but we have made it mostly from the memory of Estera's soup. It is a good dinner soup for winter, which is where we find ourselves at the moment. I like to make soup on Sunday afternoon at my leisure and then heat it up for supper on Monday, which is what we did a week ago.
Here are the ingredients: 2+ cups of cannellini beans, 4 fresh Italian sausages (2 sweet, 2 hot), 1-1/4 cup chopped onion, 3/4 cup cut-up carrots, 3/4 cup sliced celery, 1 15 oz. can diced tomatoes, 2 cups bean-cooking liquid (or water), 6 cups of stock (I used turkey and chicken), 1/4 cup of olive oil, 4 cups chopped purple kale, 2/3 cup arborio rice, plus1 teaspoon kosher salt, 1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes, and1 cup of half-and-half (not shown).
I have dried beans of various kinds so I measured out 1 cup of dry cannellini beans and soaked them overnight in a quart container. Beans into quart container; fill container with water; into the refrigerator overnight. Then I drained the beans and cooked them with a bay leaf, a whole clove of garlic and some (maybe 1/2 teaspoon) salt. I put the beans in a pan, added the other stuff and then added enough water to cover the beans with about 1" of water. They cooked in about 45 minutes.
You can certainly use canned cannellini beans. I think they are sometimes sold as white kidney beans; they are bigger than navy beans or Great Northern beans. If your grocery store does not have canned cannellini or white kidney beans, do not despair. Canned navy or Great Northern beans will be fine. If you use canned beans, use 1 can, which will be about 2 cups. And I would not recommend using the liquid from the canned beans. Instead, use 2 cups of water.
While the beans were cooking, I prepped the vegetables. I cleaned and chopped a medium onion (about 1-1/4 cup). I peeled a big carrot, cut it in half across, then cut each half again lengthwise, then cut each piece into sticks and finally cut across the sticks to end up with sort of rectangular pieces (about 3/4 cup). I cleaned 2 stalks of celery, cut them in half lengthwise and then sliced across (also about 3/4 cup). I wanted smallish pieces of the vegetables.
I got out my bigger enamelware pot. I heated up (over medium heat)1/4 cup of olive oil, then added the onion and the carrots and the celery and the salt and the red pepper flakes and cooked them over medium heat until the vegetables were somewhat soft, about 5 minutes.
Then I added the can of tomatoes, and the stock, some of which was frozen, hence the stock brick. I also added the sausages. I let the pot simmer until the stock had melted (maybe 20 minutes).
At that point, the beans (which had been cooking separately) were done. I drained the beans, discarding the bay leaf and the garlic but saving the bean-cooking liquid (hereinafter b-cl). I added the beans and 2 cups of the b-cl to the pot. I had about 2-1/2 cups of b-cl, and I discarded the last 1/2 cup.
If you are using canned beans, drain them and add them and add 2 cups of water now.
I let the soup simmer for about 10-15 minutes. The soup had cooked for about 30-45 minutes at that point, and the sausages were done. So I fished them out, took the casings off and cut the sausages into pieces. Next I added the sausage pieces and the rice, and I let the soup simmer for about 20-30 minutes to make sure the rice was fully cooked.
I used 2/3 cup of arborio rice because that's what I had left. I think 1/2 cup would be fine. Arborio rice is short-grained Italian rice. It is particularly starchy and so it thickens the soup. This is a good thing.
When the rice was cooked, I took the soup off the heat and let it cool and then refrigerated it overnight.
The next afternoon, I took the soup out of the refrigerator and put it on the stove over low-medium heat. While it was warming up, I prepped the kale - I folded each piece in half and cut out the rib, then sliced across each piece. I ended up with about 4 cups of kale pieces.
I added the kale and let it cook for about 20 minutes. I took the soup off the heat; stirred in 1 cup of half-and-half and supper was ready.
This soup is, as I said, hearty and flavorful. We bought a loaf of artisanal bread (sourdough) from the New Pioneer Co-op and dunked slices of bread into the broth. Slightly messy but so good.
I think this recipe makes about 3 or 3-1/2 quarts of soup. Plenty for lunch all week.
Odds and Ends
Cold is everywhere these days. How many times a day do we look at the thermometer?I thought I would share some information about Januarys from the past.
I tried to put this January into perspective.
I have told you about this great link to an Iowa State web page before.
http://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/sites/hist.phtml?network=IA_COOP&station=ICYI4http://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/sites/hist.phtml?network=IA_COOP&station=ICYI4
In different years the scale changes. I assume that is an after the fact adjustment. In 2018 it goes down to -20. Other years is only goes down to 0.
Notice how the historical average is no longer going down.
When you see the -25 in the forecast for this coming week, that does not seem to matter much.
Here are several previous Januarys:
Last 2018
The temperatures were warmer last year. It just never continued. Then it snowed in March and April. There was just that really cold part at the beginning.
2017
2016
There was certainly a roller coaster ride that one week in the middle of the the month.
2012
I put in 2012 because that was the warmest winter I can remember. That was the year when there were lilacs blooming on April 1.
Here was that January. The try to imagine 62 degrees. It is hard is it not?
The best way to deal with the cold is to stay inside.
The next best way to deal with it, is to wear warm clothes.
Julia mailed 45 pairs of mittens Friday to the 5 elementary schools where lots of kids are eligible for reduced or free lunch, on the theory that all kids lose mittens and this can be a bigger problem for low-income families. She made them all. Yes, each mitten you see is really two mittens. The cutest ones are the little ones.
I really like the little ones.
You should stay warm too.
Wednesday will be the coldest.
After that it will warm up some.
Of course in winter that means it will snow.
Philip
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