We had balmy temperatures at the beginning of the week. It was close to 80 on Tuesday.
We slept with windows open.
We ditched our winter coats.
We even had ants in the kitchen. Winter must be over.
Every day was something new in the garden.
The birds were louder in the morning. Wait - that was probably because we had the windows open.
Then reality set in.
While we thankfully did not get the blizzard to the north, it was 40 and gray for days. Did I mention the wind?
The winter coats and hats were back.
Actually yesterday was sunny and it got into the 50's. We got quite a bit done in the garden.
When it was warm I had started to take some plants outside. The crotons got to spend most of a week on the front porch, getting used to the outside temperatures. They all came inside Friday night as a frost appeared.
But when the sun shines it really is great.
But let me tell you about the garden.
It is all about right now.
There are tiny bulbs.
This is a lovely little collection of blue flowers called chionodoxa.
They are bigger than the squill and no where near as pervasive.
This was the first carpet- the little squill or silla. It rolled through the garden, and is actually over at this point.
These are puschkinia.
I have seen several lawns naturalized with this little bulb. It is really impressive. It spreads faster than the chionodoxa but not as fast as the squill.
I have some growing in a path by the kitchen door. I think I will dig up the path and put all those bulbs in the front lawn.
The hellebores are wonderful.
For the longest time I did not know what a hellebore was.
We saw some in the Missouri Botanical gardens one spring in St. Louis.
We got the first ones about 2001. The biggest clumps date from that point.
What is coming in the next 2 weeks?
Tree peonies
Yes, there are four I grew from seed. They set their buds in the fall. The buds were up 2 feet above the ground. There was no insulation when the temperature got to -30.
I do believe the number of flowers will be down a little from last year.
They are right along Fairview Avenue. Check them out in about a week.
They will only bloom for 3-4 days.
Bluebells (and whitebells)
They are coming up all over. I have started potting some up. $3 each if you are interested.
My clump of whitebells is coming up. There are 3 plants at this point. The foliage for the white ones is mostly green. The foliage for the bluebells is darker, almost purple when it just emerges.
Slipper orchids
I have one clump of cypripedium orchids. The hybrid is called Gisela.
These slipper orchids are natives to the northern parts of the country.
I have had Gisela since 2008. For almost ten years only 2 shoots came up. Then in 2017 there were 3 shoots.
What does that say about the very cold winter.
Actually as I think about it we had an early winter. We also had quite a bit of fall rain.
Then the really cold weather took over when there was some snow insulating the ground.
Whatever the reason so far at least the clump has never done so well.
More
What a wonderful yellow.
This is a little trillium that is the first one to bloom.
Anemone blandas are good. They do clump up after a few years.
Here is the first of many double bloodroots.
One ground cover for part of the garden is dog tooth violets. They carpet the area under the old pink crabapple trees. They have started to bloom.
A full blooming primrose.
Here is this wonderful trillium, that has come up by itself for ten years.
Julia's recipe
Yogurt
Yogurt
In the 1960s, yogurt was still an ethnic food like feta cheese or kimchee. But somewhere in the midst of hippie/back-to-the-land culture, along came yogurt as something to eat or cook with or make yourself out of your own unpasteurized un-homogenized milk, cow or goat. I did not make yogurt in the Good Old Days, but I did become a consumer and a fan. Yogurt has figured in our diets for many years, both as something to eat straight up and as an ingredient. (Think corn bread or cold cucumber soup or any recipe that calls for buttermilk).
This winter when I was visiting Katie and Elisabeth and Christopher in Maine, they made yogurt. I observed that it was pretty easy, and it tasted great. So I made it myself recently. It has very few ingredients (two, to be precise). It does require some specialized equipment and some patience, but not much hands-on work.
Ingredients: milk, store-bought yogurt. That's it. I used 1 gallon of Anderson Erickson whole milk and 1/2 cup of Brown Cow plain whole milk yogurt.
Use whole milk and whole milk yogurt.
You could use 1/2 gallon of milk and 1/4 cup yogurt, which might be preferable in terms of patience and yield. Or 1 quart of milk and 2 tablespoons of yogurt.
I did not use organic milk. Katie and Elisabeth did, and they advise to check organic whole milk to make sure it is not "ultra-pasteurized". They used ultra-pasteurized organic whole milk once, and it simply did not thicken.
I started by rigging up a double boiler: a very large bowl in the yellow enamelware pot. I made sure that the bowl would fit in the pot and not reach the bottom of the pot. Then I put some water in the pot (enough to be below the bottom of the pot - put some water in the pot, put the bowl in, take the bowl out and see if the bottom of the bowl is wet. If it is, you've got too much water.) Next I put the bowl in the pot, and poured the milk in the bowl. One gallon of milk seems like a whole lot of milk when it is in a bowl. I have a cooking/candy thermometer (I use it when I make peanut brittle), and I clipped it to the side of the bowl with the bulb end in the milk. I turned on the burner, waited until the water boiled (which I could tell from steam leaking out around the bowl), turned down the heat and went away.
The goal is to bring the milk up to 180 degrees. This took a surprisingly long time - several hours. I think next time I will use 1/2 gallon of milk which should cut the milk-heating time considerably. A skin will form on top of the milk as it heats. Leave it alone - you can skim it off at the end of this phase.
If you have some other kind of cooking thermometer, of course you could use it although you will probably need to check on the milk now and then to assess progress.
When the milk reached 180 degrees, I took the bowl out of the pot and put it on a trivet on the counter. I skimmed off the skin which had formed on the milk, gave the milk a stir and went away again, leaving the thermometer in place.
I left the milk on the counter until the temperature of the milk had dropped to 110 degrees. This took about an hour.
When the milk hit 110 degrees, I took my store-bought yogurt out of the refrigerator and measured 1/2 cup into a small bowl.
Also I turned my slow cooker on low and turned the timer on for 5 minutes. When the timer went off, I turned off the slow cooker.
The idea is to warm up the yogurt-forming environment a bit, and then to turn the heat off.
I ladled a couple of ladle-fulls of the warm milk into the yogurt, and whisked.
After whisking some milk (maybe a cup) into the yogurt, I whisked the yogurt-milk mixture back into the big bowl of milk.
Then I poured all of the milk into the slow cooker, draped a towel over the top to make sure of a tight fit, put the lid on the slow cooker and went away yet again.
Actually, it was late evening when I got to this step, and I went to bed.
In the morning, about 12 hours after I put the milk in the slow cooker, I took the top off and took the towel off, and behold! I had yogurt.
There was a bit of evaporation during the milk-heating stage so I ended up with 3 quarts of yogurt plus maybe 1 to 1-1/2 cups more which Philip and I simply ate with some nice berries we had on hand.
The yogurt is very satisfactory in addition to being homemade. So far it has not separated into that sort of curds and whey stage that I find in commercial yogurt.
Store-bought yogurt lasts for 3 or 4 weeks in my refrigerator, and I see no reason not to have the same length of shelf-life for my yogurt. It's particularly good with berries or applesauce or rhubarb sauce (which I have in my freezer from last summer) or honey. And economical to boot. I spent about $4.50 for a gallon of milk and got more than 3 quarts of yogurt, which cost about $4.50 per quart. Even if you use organic (not ultra-pasteurized) milk, you will still come out ahead on the cost side. And you will feel virtuous and self-sufficient, positive feelings in These Trying Times.
Odds and Ends
In the very early spring everything is new. There are no weeds. There are no bugs. It is a glorious time.It does not take long for that initial phase to be finished. Lots of things are still new. It is still wonderful.
But the aconite and snowdrops are finished.
The blue carpet of squill is finished.
It is time to move on.
It is even time to think about next year. What is gardening if it is not a temporary trip from the past to the future?
I really should get more puschkinia. I will get more corydalis.
I begin to get overwhelmed by the amount of work to do.
But I can go to sleep thinking about what might be done tomorrow.
Maybe I will drain the pond.
Philip
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