March 3, 2019- The playoffs in the picture contest

It is March.
Spring is coming so soon that you can do the math in your head.
It will be here in 18 days.
Really?
Tonight it is to get down to -9 here in Iowa City.
The snow cover is still with us.
There is not much of a melt when the temperatures stay cold.
Did I really just say that?
It will finally warm by next weekend.
Actually that means 32 degrees.
In addition there is snow in the forecast for next weekend.

I have been busy at work.
The garden seems far away.

In last week's voting 

...the winner was the hydrangea. The hellebore finished second. It garnered enough votes that it makes the playoffs as a wild card.
Here is your winner from Week 13.

The full vote last week was:

So here we are. 13 weeks after we started this contest. It is a good thing we have 4 more weeks of the contest. We will need that month to hopefully have Springtime get here.
For those of you further north maybe I can add a few extra sessions for your benefit.
One year we arrived in Maine in June. There were still a few daffodils blooming.

There will now be 3 weeks of playoffs. They will feature the 13 winners and 3 wild cards. Each week you will pick of of five pictures. (Yes I know the math is not exact. The third week will have 6 pictures.)
I have seeded the winners.

The 3 Top Seeds are
Orange Asclepias Week 8
Zinnia Week 9
Hydrangae Week 13
Being a top seed means that you will not meet another top seeded contestant in the 3 rounds to come.

Wildcards
Hellebore Week 13              30%
Double Bloodroot Week 4   29%
Black Lily Week 6               27%

These nice pictures did not make the cut.

Fall Crocus week 8              26%
Dark Dwarf Iris Week 10    26%

So here we go.

Week 1 of the playoffs

Here is your first group of winners you selected.
Now the choice become harder. (At least that is the theory.)

 #1 Speckled Zinnia from Week 9 (September 23, 2018)

What a joyful picture. Just as the sun makes a cold day better, sun on a flower really does wonders.

#2  Little cristata iris from Week 3 (May 10, 2018)

This great little somewhat different iris has both the sun and blue. That is a winning combination.

#3 Double Bloodroot- the wild card from Week 4 (April 24, 2018)

As any of you know who have followed the blog for years, I love double bloodroot. It disappeared on me 3 years ago. It is back. I really cannot wait for it to bloom in a month or two. It is now planted in 4-5 places in the garden. I anticipate that it will have started to spread making a whole bunch of perfect flowers.

#4 The pink moss rose- from Week 7 (June 16, 2018)

What a blast of pure color.
Moss roses do seed themselves. I really will watch to see if the little seedlings show up.
This contestant represents the pink end of the color spectrum this week.

#5 The white daffodil- Week 10 (May 1, 2018)

What a perfect flower. There is all that white with the burst of color in the center.
Did you see the little corona of yellow around the center?

There you have 5 great pictures.
Vote early. Find a friend and vote often.
Children are welcome.
After you vote electronically if you go away from the webcite and come back, the second person can vote on the same computer/phone.

Bonus Pictures

Each year when I select the pictures I pick out maybe 75 pictures I like. Over time I move them into the 65 chosen for the 13 weeks in the contest.
That is a process that evolves throughout the contest. The five pictures selected for the last few weeks, changes even during the contest.  I find I missed some pictures while reviewing the pictures from the year.  The hydrangea that won last week was one I had initially overlooked.

Here are several that were in the 75 being considered, that did not make it into the contest.

March 23, 2018

These early crocuses are/were wonderful.

March 23, 2018

When will we have snowdrops this year? April 1?

March 30, 2018

April 25, 2018

The crocus made a friend. Maybe they could form a group.














This is a primrose I have had for at least 5 years. (That means it could have been 10.)
One can really get drawn into primroses.

May 12, 2018

Pink tulips are good.

June 3, 2018

There are always so many waterlily pictures.
This past year was strange in the little pond. The leaves grew much more than usual. I was often having flowers surrounded by leaves, just peaking out at the sun and the sky.

June 26, 2018

Orange
Daylilies
Are
Wonderful.

July 12,2018

Lantana give you many glorious close up shots.

July 13, 2018

Lillium can dominate the garden for that month in high summer.















Can you find the frog? They really had many hiding places last summer.

August 7, 2018

Julia's recipe

Chicken soup, from scratch

All of Julia's recipes for the last 2.5 years can be found at
https://mearskitchen.wordpress.com

I make soup pretty often, and my favorites are chicken, beef barley and chicken paprikash, all soups that constitute a meal. I have not shared a recipe for chicken soup yet, and so here goes. Chicken soup from scratch takes some time and requires some work, but when you're done, you will have delicious soup, some chicken stock for the freezer and a day's worth of the aroma of chicken soup cooking.


I started with a 4-1/2 lb. chicken from the farmer's market, plus a big onion, 3 carrots (washed but not peeled), 2 cups of celery tops (washed), 1 tablespoon of salt, 1/2 teaspoon of whole peppercorns, 2 bay leaves and 6 quarts of water.

And a big pot. I recommend owning a big pot or two. We have two. They are good for making applesauce, turkey carcass soup, and beef barley soup, among other things. I think this pot holds 10 quarts. I have one that is even bigger, which gets used less often.

I bought the big pots at a restaurant supply store, which exist in most cities bigger than Iowa City. Restaurant supply stores are a lot of fun, but disorienting. The cookware comes in assorted sizes, but it is all bigger than at a department store - some is so big that there is a risk of losing all sense of scale. Hence my even bigger pot. I have bought other things at such stores - a large mesh strainer, fiesta ware serving pieces, a big pot lid to fit either of the big pots. Check out such a store if there is one in your community.



I peeled the onion, but left it whole. I cut off the ends of the carrots and broke them in thirds. I put the onion, carrot pieces, and celery pieces in the bottom of the smaller big pot.  Then I rinsed the chicken, removed the innards and put it in the pot too. I did not cook the liver, heart, gizzard because I do not find them tasty. You may disagree. I did add the neck to the pot because the neck is all bony and bones are good for broth making.

Then I added 6 quarts of water, and lastly, the salt, peppercorns and bay leaves.

Then I turned the heat to medium and waited the soup to come to a boil. I heated the soup on medium because bringing it to a boil on high heat causes it to develop a froth on the surface. Alton Brown once explained it - something about protein. Heating the soup more slowly lessens the amount of froth. After the soup came to a boil, I turned it down a bit so it kept bubbling but gently. I did not cover the pot. I did turn on the range hood to deal with the soup-generated humidity.

You will notice that there are two pots - I decided to make chicken stock as well as soup. I had a 5-1/2 lb. package of chicken backs, and I did the same thing - chicken, onion, carrots, celery, salt, peppercorns, bay leaves, water but on a slightly bigger scale.



After about 2 hours, the chicken was falling apart. I used a slotted spoon to remove the chicken to a colander over a bowl (to catch stock). When the chicken was cool, I took the meat off the bones, ending up with about 6 cups. I put the meat in a bowl, and I put the skin and bones back into the pot. I refrigerated the chicken and returned the pot to the heat, adding about 2 more cups of water to replace some that had boiled off.






After another couple of hours, I took the pot off the stove, and I let it cool for about 30 minutes. Then I put the large mesh strainer over another pot (the one I use to cook spaghetti - a regular large cooking pot) and ladled the stock out of the pot.

When the receiving-stock pot got full, I ladled it into another container, an 8 cup container with a pouring spout. I discarded the solids. I ended up with about 5 quarts of chicken stock, 3 for the soup and 2 for the freezer.



I then cut up an onion (diced), 2 peeled carrots (sliced) and 2 stalks of celery (sliced), ending up with about 1-1/4 cup of each. I added the vegetables to the stock along with 1 cup of alphabets. I like alphabet soup. Fine or medium noodles would be good or orzo or Israeli cous cous. Not wide noodles which would be hard to wrestle with at dinner time. Or you could use rice.

I used 3 quarts of the chicken stock and 3 cups of chicken meat, which I cut up into bite-sized pieces, in addition to the alphabets and vegetables.



Here it is. Very flavorful. We served the soup with some nice artisanal bread from the New Pioneer Co-op. Nice to dip a piece of sturdy bread into the soup. Crackers are always welcome.

We also put a little pitcher of lemon juice on the table. My mother always put lemon juice in her chicken soup. Probably a Greek thing.

Leftover chicken soup makes a lovely lunch on a cold day. The soup also freezes well, as does the stock.

I ended up with 8 quarts of stock altogether (when I finished with the stock cooking in the other pot). Thank goodness I have a chest freezer. It is nice to have quarts of frozen chicken stock on hand. It is a good base for other soups like bean soup or mushroom soup. It is also good for making rice, both spiced-up rice for Latin American or Asian meals or just plain.

If you want to use one of your frozen quarts, put it in the sink and run water over the container. After a few minutes, you will be able to get the block of stock out of the container and into a saucepan to melt over low heat.

Right now

Little corners of the garden ground are slowly emerging.



Right in that tiny bit of ground was some little sedum, showing their green. They will be up against some cold temperatures these next few night. Actually that is one benefit of snow cover. It can insulate the plants from the very cold.

Odds and Ends

Here was February in Iowa City. By the end of the month the average high was 40 degrees, with the average low being about 20.

My hanging pumpkins have been happy with the cold weather.
You can tell which one has been outside the longest.



I think I actually still have two last pumpkins in the basement. Maybe today they will go outside.

There are many pot holes at the moment in the streets. The front page of yesterday's Iowa City newspaper had an article about the coming efforts to deal with the pot holes.

I hope that you can find the way to fill the pot holes in your coming journeys.
As I have said before...
Warmer days are coming.
That has to happen sometime.
May it be soon.

Philip