June 2, 2019 All the great in-between flowers are blooming

For once I am not going to lead with the weather.
We have had 3 mostly dry days, so the garden really should get the lead.


There is sort of an in between time in the garden year.
In early Spring you have all the excitement of the many spring bulbs. There are snowdrops, aconite, crocuses, daffodils, tulips, and many less well know bulbs. The season in my garden is topped off by the expanse of Virginia bluebells.


By mid June the lilies will start, as high summer explodes, with with a riot of color.


Before you get to high summer, however, you must get through  the in between time.
Sometimes that is a little quiet.
The spent foliage of the bluebells and other little bulbs, gets cleaned out.
The annuals have just been planted.
It is a time of steady growth, as the hosta get bigger and bigger.
Of course all the high summer perennials also grow like crazy. (If you are not in some kind of time stasis, like we were for about 3 weeks.)
But they do not bloom.
It is a time of green, in many varieties.


We are in that in between time.
And the garden is anything but quiet.

There are the peonies. They have just started blooming in the last few days.
They were blooming in Springfield, Missouri, three weeks ago. I guess that is how far behind we are.
There are peonies all over town.
Julia said today she had never seen a peony she didn't like. I replied that there were of course certain peonies that we liked better than others.
I keep campaigning for people to bring them into the house and enjoy them there.
In a bouquet peonies and Siberian Iris make a great pair.

Then there are poppies, which also have just started this week.

And then there are Siberian Iris. My,  how there are Siberian Iris.


Let me show you a few pictures.

This is a wonderful peony called Coralie.
There are an entire group of peonies with Coral in the name. They all have a wonderful reddish pink color.

Please understand that I do not have many peonies. Well I have the tree peonies. I have 4 of the herbaceous variety. (that die back to the ground every year)


This is a single white peony called Requiem.

This peony was developed by professor A.P. Saunders. It seems like so many plants had that person who spent a lifetime developing so much of what we see today.
He was a professor of chemistry at Hamilton College, whose passion was peony hybridizing.

He worked in that area from the 1920’s into the 1950’s.

This peony was  developed in 1944.

He would make crosses of the different varieties around at the time. I read that he selected only 1% of his seedlings for further development. (Presumably he would have to wait several years on any plant, waiting to see how it bloomed.) Since he has over 200 named varieties that meant he had bred to flowering over 200,000 plants.





In all that green there is a single poppy. It is called Beauty of Livermore and it is an amazing color. We saw if up the street 25 years ago but no one knew the name. We tried several varieties but none were the red we were looking for.

The we found it. We got it. We planted it in the front yard. It still shows up. But this area has even more high shade that 10 years ago. I will have to get some more of the variety and try them elsewhere in the garden.

This picture below comes close to the right color.
It really is able to stop people as they walk by. I think that is about the biggest complement I can think of in a garden. (There are special bonus points if you can get a high school boy to notice something in the garden.)
One person told me yesterday at the farmer's market that she had been riding by on her bicycle, but had to stop to take a picture.

Here you have Beauty of Livermore.

Then there are the Siberian Iris.

I have worked hard with them.
They were ignored for almost a decade. I have been dividing them and getting new ones for 2-3 years now.
Here are some individual pictures.







This is the new one called Here be Dragons.






Blue is good.




How about yellow?

























This is my new favorite corner of the garden.
It is back by the pond. The Siberian Iris are blooming as are the tradescantia. Those are the little pink guys that are all over the place. They are also called Spiderwort.





Here is a closer look at these pink flowers.



Actually they close up by about noon. But we had 3 straight days with sun in the morning.

The sun has been a big ball of orange in the early morning, for several days.Apparently that is because of the wildfires in Canada. They are dry. We are not.








Here is a little short video of that area by the pond.

More pictures from this last week.









Here is the painted fern with a star of Bethlehem peeking through.

Painted ferns are good. They spread. They transplant reasonably well. They grow in the shade/part shade.
















This was one of the first orchid cactus to bloom.













It has been a down year for lupine. But there are many self seeded seedlings. This suggests that next year will be a good year.

This pair does make you remember why you love lupines. It is another in-between flower.











This is a tall Star of Bethlehem. It has some other name. It rises this time of year and provides some sparkle.

Julia's recipe

Lamb and lentils

Remember all of Julia's recipes that have appeared in this blog are located at 

https://mearskitchen.wordpress.com/

We make lamb at Easter, as Greeks will do. I braise a leg of lamb, and I always have leftover lamb. This spring, I had three meals worth of leftover lamb, so in the following weeks we had lamb curry, red Thai curry with lamb and lamb and lentils. I like having containers of leftover protein in the freezer as it makes for dinner in an hour, which is a good thing on a weekday. By the way, if you are of the ham-eating community, this recipe works well with leftover ham. The recipe is from the Fannie Farmer Cookbook, which includes recipes for leftover meats of all kinds, which is not usual in my experience, but nice. 


Here are the ingredients: 2+ cups of leftover cooked lamb (in bite-sized pieces), 1-1/2 cups chopped onion, 3/4 cup diced green pepper, 1/3 cup chopped parsley (not essential, but I had some parsley on hand), 1 cup regular (khaki-colored) lentils, about 1 teaspoon smushed garlic, 1 can (15 oz.) diced tomatoes, 3 cups water, 1 cup of lamb stock (or an extra cup of water), salt and pepper.

Sometimes I add 1 cup celery, but not on this occasion.



I started by putting everything but the lamb in the yellow enameled pot: water, lamb stock, tomatoes, onion, green pepper, garlic, parsley, lentils, along with 1 teaspoon of salt and 1/2 teaspoon of pepper.

I brought the mixture to a boil, reduced the heat so the mixture simmered, and cooked it for about 30 minutes. I took a look about 15 minutes in to make sure the pot wasn't boiling too furiously and that there was still adequate liquid (that is, covering the lentils).

After 30 minutes, I checked again and the lentils were done. And the mixture had boiled down a bit and thickened.

I added the cut-up lamb, gave it a stir, and let the pot simmer for a few minutes until the lamb was heated through. Supper!

Here it is, thick, kind of lamb-y and flavorful. We serve it with rice. You could also serve it with little pasta like orzo or tiny shells or rings. Or if you like, plain with no starch at all.

We always have a nice green salad with dinner, and that was that. You could have a side of broccoli or green beans or asparagus in the springtime.

As I say, this dish would work with ham bits, if you are more apt to have leftover ham on hand.

Odds and Ends

A few short notes about the weather.
We had 4 inches of rain on Tuesday. Then there was another inch on Wednesday.
That brought the official count for May to over 11 inches. My gauge actually had a little more than that.
We, like many people, had some water in our basement.

So we had the gutter people over to clean the gutters on the very top of the house.
I  bought my own Shop Vac. The one I had borrowed really helped with the aforementioned water in the basement.

So now it has been mostly dry for three days in a row. (There was a brief shower yesterday afternoon.)
The annuals have finally begun to grow.

I planted zinnia seed yesterday. They should start blooming in August.
I planted some calla lily bulbs also yesterday. They might bloom in late July.
Gardening is all about the present and the future.

Philip