February 10, 2019 Spring is around the corner

There are only 39 days until Spring.
We will have 10 hours and 25 minutes between sunrise and sunset today.
The polar vortex is behind us.
I have little lupine seedlings up about 2 inches.
The amaryllis have broken dormancy.
The first Spring training baseball game is in 11 days.

Well, I still live in Iowa. It is still February.
Enough said about that.

We have a winter picture contest. We just completed Week 10. There are only 3 more weeks of contestants. At that point the 13 winners and 3 wild cards will advance to the elimination rounds. By then it will be warm. We will have survived.


So here was your winner in Week 10.

Here was the full vote. It was close for the first day. Then the daffodil pulled away.

Wild card positions through week 10:
3 will advance- unless there is a tie

Double Bloodroot Week 4   29%
Black Lily Week 6               27%
Fall Crocus week 8              26%
Dark Dwarf Iris Week 10    26%

Here is Week 11

As a special feature this week I invite you to vote, and in addition make a prediction as to who will win. I for example will vote for a certain contestant. But I think a different contestant will win and I will tell you why.

If you put your thoughts in the comments at the end of the post, others can see what you say.

Or if you would prefer and get the email, you can say so by email.

This week is somewhat unusual. There are 3 pictures from September. 

It is also a remarkable field. I really have no idea which picture will win.

#1 Tree peony seeds (September 8, 2018)



I pondered for a while whether to put this picture in the contest. Can a picture of a seed pod compete with colorful flowers? But I really liked the picture. Perhaps that is because I have a special fondness for my home grown tree peonies.
My four grown-from-seed tree peonies all bloomed this year. One had 8-9 flowers. You saw a picture in Week 5.
I left the flowers on the plants. They turned into wonderful seedpods. Then in September the seeds emerged. They were so beautiful. There was a hint of brown in some of them.
What if the plant you have grown from seed has seeds which then produce plants. Are you a grandparent?
See the bonus section for how the pods  looked like jester hats before they opened.

I should tell about one remarkable feature of tree peony seed. I read this somewhere, which must make it true. If you plant the seeds right away, right after they are ripe in the fall and come out of the pod, they will germinate right away. I guess in the case of being outside they would germinate in the spring.
If you put them in a container and wait for the next spring to plant them, they may not germinate for another year.
When I planted the seeds originally 5-6-7 years ago, they did nothing. I just forgot about them. A year or so later I found a few little plants that had what looked like peony leaves.
They then took about 4 years to bloom. But it was so exciting watching them grow.
And now an entire new generation may come along.
I shared some of these seeds. Some are apparently now growing in Florida. Something has sprouted in those pots. The plants are still tiny. Stay tuned.
I planted some myself in December in a pot inside. So far nothing has happened. Maybe I will need to wait until 2020.
I must just forget about them.
But I will plant some of the class of 2019 next October,  as soon as I can get them out of the pod.


#2  Red Iceland poppy (May 22, 2018)

Sometimes the background makes the picture. This brilliant red poppy with the yellow center and the brown background just took my breath away. There have been some good red Iceland poppies over the years. This might be the best.
Please see the bonus section for other Iceland poppies from 2018.
This year's crop is growing from seed in the basement.

I will say this plant needs a lot of sun. I got maybe 50 plants I planted last year into the ground. Unfortunately many places did not have the sun to sustain the plants into June.


#3 Air plant-a/k/a tillandsia (September 12, 2018)

I do try to show you some plants that are different.
This is an air plant. As you might guess it is not from around here. We got it from friends in Florida in 2015. It reliably blooms in the fall. This particular construction was put together by attaching a number of the little plants to some structure to make a globe.
It is mostly green until it is going to bloom. Then it turns red and this blue/purple thing extends out, with the tip being yellow. Look at the closeup in the bonus pictures.
While it was blooming over several weeks it was a plant to make sure people came into the garden to see.
Air plants are really popular these days. Just look around at your grocery store.
This plant spends the winter in the kitchen over the sink. It gets sprayed every few days. It rotates around the windows in the kitchen with several small orchids.

This air plant is in the genus tillandsias.  They are in the  same family with bromeliads.


 #4 Trillium (May 17, 2018)



This garden gem is trillium grandiflorum. It opens white and fades to pink over several weeks. You cannot have too many trillium.


#5 Zinnia with Butterfly (September 23, 2018)



You saw the zinnias from 2018 in several weekly contests this winter. Here was perhaps the zinnia with the best adornment. What a beautiful creature. Actually the flower goes well with the butterfly. It is a nice color contrast.
This butterfly, or ones like it, really liked the zinnias. I assume they were all on their way south. It was September.


There you have Week 11. Vote away. Encourage anyone else there with you to vote too. The way you do that is to first make one vote. Then go away from the website. When you come back you can vote again.

Bonus Pictures

Over the years there have been other seed pods in the contest.
Here they are. Can you identify them? The names will be given next week.
Guesses are encouraged.
























More peony seed pods from 2018.





Here are the seed pods, a few weeks before they opened

















































                Here is a close up of the air plant.















Another picture with a few more "flowers." It put on this display for several weeks.












More Iceland poppies. The first few pictures were taken while they were still in their pots on May 1.

Julia's recipe

Brown Rice and Cheese Casserole

all of Julia's recipes that have appeared in the blog for 2 and one half years can be found at

https://mearskitchen.wordpress.com/

Thank you Katie

I have an old copy of The New York Times Natural Foods Cookbook, circa 1971. It is very serious and includes a recipe for nut and soy loaf and another for lentil loaf and something called macrobiotic super soup with buckwheat dumplings. Yikes. But occasionally there is a recipe where the resulting food tastes good despite the sincerity. This is one of the tastes-good recipes, a casserole of brown rice and cheddar cheese and egg and milk, sort of a savory rice pudding. It is a nice light dinner, on the table in under an hour if you have cooked brown rice on hand.


Here are the players: 3-1/2 cups of cooked long grain brown rice (or brown basmati or short grain); 1/2 cup finely chopped onion; 1/2 cup finely chopped green pepper (or red or orange); 2 cups half and half; 3 cups of grated sharp cheddar cheese; 4 eggs plus salt and pepper.










You will observe the pig-faced casserole, which was given to us by our old friend Mrs. Davis, who knew her way around amusing cookware. I am not sure what this is made of. Not metal or ceramic (at least not ceramic as I know it) or glass or wood. No matter. It works in the oven and is easy to clean.

We sprayed it with cooking spray and turned the oven on to 350 degrees.







I added the vegetables to the bowl that already held the rice, then added the eggs, mixing thoroughly. Then I added about 3/4 teaspoon of salt and 1/4 teaspoon of pepper. Then the half and half and lastly the cheese.












When everything was thoroughly mixed in, I dumped the contents of the bowl into the casserole, and I put the casserole in the oven for about 40 minutes. I tested the casserole for doneness as one would test rice pudding or bread pudding: I stuck a knife into the casserole near the center. When the knife came out clean, the casserole was done.

And here is is. It's pretty hot right out of the oven, so it should stand for maybe 10 minutes. I think we served it with acorn squash. But any green vegetable: spinach, broccoli, green beans, asparagus would be a nice color contrast on the plat. Plus salad of course. This will serve 4 people or 2 plus leftovers, which are good cold or warmed up.

And you would be eating a dish from an earlier equally but differently goofy era. Right on, brothers and sisters!

Right now

I brought in 2 pieces of the annual called Persian Shield. It is a wonderful vibrant purple.
I rooted the cuttings.
Here one of them is yesterday. I just moved it to a bigger pot.




Just when I was thinking I had enough space for new seedlings, along come a few amaryllis. They were put into a dark under-the-stairs place where the temperatures were maybe in the 50's. The darn things just broke dormancy on their own. They did that with no water or light, or any attention for at least 2 months. When I got them out of the closest they were all white, not having had any light. I could have been accused of plant abuse. They recovered nicely.
Here is the first one to grace our dining room table.
They really do brighten up the winter months.







When the sunlight came in there was a wonderful show.










Here is the air plant hanging over the kitchen sink.




















Here are Iceland poppies in their infancy.
I will soon divide the clumps into individual cells.

Odds and ends

Julia and I both went to Grinnell College. We went there a long time ago.
The alumni association sends college "couples" valentines.
Here was the one we got this week. It was really odd.





Here is something else that is odd.
This blog gives me statistics for blog visits or hits.
There are somewhere between 450-550 during the week.
I always wonder because only 40-50 vote.
We to start with this past week there were 175 hits from Italy. What?
During the Democratic convention in 2016 there were many hits from Russia.
It also gives me statistics from how many come from different browsers.
Most are from Firefox or Chrome. You would expect that.
There was one from something called IceWeasel. What?
How odd.



I have limited any discussion this week about the cold.
Let me just say that winter continues.
It did get down to 0 again the end of the week.
It seemed like nothing after the Vortex.

I will send along this closing picture from the last two weeks. Julia even put the hood on her coat while the Vortex was happening.
It has been removed.
Spring is around the corner.
Because of all the ice at the moment, we are getting there very slowly.















Stay warm.
Be of good cheer.
Winter is losing its icy grip.
Don't look at the weather forecast.
Philip