June 23, 2019- Anticipation

Everywhere you look in the garden there are buds. There are lilium buds. There are a few orchid cactus buds. I could imagine a few cactus buds. Then there are all the daylily scapes, some now being above the foliage.
The riot of high summer is around the corner.

It is a very busy time in the garden. Of course as I write that, I wonder when is there not a busy time.

We finished the path project yesterday. In the last two months we have replaced all the wood chip paths throughout the garden. The big pile of wood chips is all used up.
This had not been done in several years. Some of the older paths had fully broken down chips. Some of that material was used to top dress certain beds. Some have been used to add to various potting mixes.

Now there is that entire back driveway. It is like an empty garden bed. It is so full of possibilities.

It is time to clean the beds with the last of the spring foliage. Some will get some additional color.  They can either get annuals, or houseplants. There are a lot of houseplants. There are the clivia and the crotons and the cactus. Those are all plants that start with the letter 'c'. What does that mean.

One of my tasks for the next month will be to divide several large clivia. Then of course I will have another dozen clivia.

We are back in a rain pattern again in Iowa City. While we have avoided the multi-inch rains, it seems like it is raining about every other day.
In the forecast from yesterday there was this great quote:
"Storms continue this weekend, but not all the time."

Rain every other day does mean that plants transplant well.
I have been moving some of the little zinnia seedlings around. They will provide fresh color in September.

The calla lilies are now about half out of the ground. I planted them 3 weeks ago, anticipating that they would bloom in August.

Last year's lilium acquisitions have been identified.
I located the invoice.
I can't say enough about splashing 3-5 lily bulbs around the garden. Asiatic lilies in particular give you great color this time of year. They bloom before the daylilies and their lilium cousins.

I showed you the first bloom last week in this clump. It is called Fiamma. It is a cross between an Easter lily and an Asiatic lily. The first flower has lasted well over a week. It could be in bloom for 3-4 weeks at this point. Actually I planted it with several bright yellow Asiatics. They should bloom together over the next few weeks.




Fiamma has such a wonderful color. It is even better in the sunlight. It creates one of those spotlight places in the garden.
Julia and I both said that it reminded us of the daylily called Primal Scream.
Here they are side by side. Actually the Primal Scream picture is from last year.



The daylilies are coming. I would expect the first one to bloom in about 7-10 days. It is suppose to get warm by the end of this week. That should accelerate everything, including the weeds.


This picture is a little hard to see. This is the clump of another Asiatic lily acquisition from last fall. It is called Night rider. It looks to be almost black.
The bud has been growing bigger every day.
That would not be worth a comment by itself.
It seems to be taking for ever to open.
I am so looking forward to the first one opening.

Both of these lilies, Fiamma and Night Rider,  were obtained from B and D lilies, located in the Pacific northwest.
I looked at the blog from that business this week. It was interesting. Here is the link.

https://bdlilies.blogspot.com/

Lilium apparently get slugs, just like hosta.
B and D lilies achieve some control over slugs by using geese. Really?
I do not have any geese.
Slugs can be a problem with hosta.

On slug control I have heard about putting out beer.
I had not heard that you can put out old fruit pieces, including banana peels,  with the inside face down.
I thought I would try it.
I understand you then look at the old fruit in the morning. If there are slugs you put them and the old fruit in the compost for the city.










The lollipop lilies keep going.

















So do the Japanese Iris. I really need to get into that bed and cut back the tradescantia.














The Clematis keep going.

















I also have an announcement about my waterlily experiment.




 I separated about half my waterlilies this spring. The question was whether the too many in one pot lilies would grow so much foliage that it would block out the flowers.
So far there is a material difference from one end of the pond to the other.

The repotted end, which appears at the top of this picture,  has lily pads that are lying on the surface of the pond. The other end has the foliage going up in the air.














I have to wrote something about our smoke bush. It is getting to be a small tree. It is really smoking. I tell people a smoke bush just has to get to a certain age before it can smoke.
It is actually pretty, having a nice reddish hue, particularly in the sun.





Here are some clivia pictures.





The orange one in the front yard is just spectacular. It has four stems of these great orange flowers.










Here you can see the contrast in colors.

Julia's recipe
Curried Chicken salad

Remember, all Julia's recipes that have appeared on the blog can be found at

https://mearskitchen.wordpress.com/
There really are a lot of them at this point.

We eat chicken salad in the summertime, not as a sandwich filling but as dinner. Our standby has already been posted here, as Wendy's Chicken Salad because she was the source of the recipe. This recipe comes from a cookbook called Raising the Salad Bar which Maggie gave her father (the salad-maker among us) for Christmas some years ago. It is fast and tasty - if you have cooked chicken on hand, which I often do.  I make chicken stock frequently and get my cooked chicken that way, but there another way to acquire cooked chicken, as discussed below, not at all time-consuming.


Here are the players. For the chicken salad: 4 cups cooked chicken, 1 apple (which came to about 3/4 cup when peeled, cored and chopped), 2 little scallions (which came to about 1/4 cup when cleaned and sliced), 3 ribs of celery (which came to about 1+ cups when cleaned and chopped up), 1/2 cup toasted coarsely chopped pecans and 2 cups (not pictured, but essential) seedless red grapes, cut in half. And I also added about 1/3 cup chopped parsley (not essential, but I had it on hand).
For the dressing: 2 tablespoons mayonnaise, 1/4 cup of chutney (we used peach chutney, but any kind will be fine), 1/4 cup olive oil, 2 tablespoons lemon juice, 2 teaspoons curry powder, 1/2 teaspoon of regular salt and 1/2 teaspoons pepper.


For some reason, all I have is the before and after pictures. I started by prepping the ingredients and putting them all in a big bowl. I turned the oven on to 300 degrees and put the pecan pieces on a little pie pan for about 10 minutes. This can also be done in a little skillet on the top of the stove. In either case, keep an eye on the nuts.

I cut the chicken into biggish (say 3/4" to 1") pieces. I cut the little scallions in half lengthwise and then across so the onion bits would be little. I washed the celery and cut the thick ends off (and ate them; I like celery), then cut the stalks in half lengthwise and across into thin (say 1/4") slices. I peeled and cored the apple and cut it into wedges and then chopped the wedges. I plucked the leaves off some flat-leaf parsley and chopped it up. Lastly, I rinsed off the grapes and cut a bunch of them in half (totaling 2 cups). At that point, I had all the ingredients (except the pecans) in the big bowl. I let the pecans cool off while I mixed the dressing.

I got a small jar with a tight-fitting lid and added all of the dressing ingredients: mayo, chutney, olive oil, lemon juice, curry powder, salt and pepper. I shook the jar vigorously and the dressing came together. I poured the dressing on the salad, tossed it gently, sprinkled the pecans on top, and it was dinnertime. You should taste the salad and see if it needs more salt. Or pepper.

We served the salad with a side of tomatoes and fresh mozzarella cheese (drizzled with olive oil and wine vinegar and salt and pepper and with some parsley sprinkled on top - fancy schmancy) and a pan of moist corn bread and some honeydew melon.

I cook chicken in a big soup pot every month or so, to acquire chicken stock and also to acquire cooked chicken. However, there is also rotisserie chicken in the grocery store. If you buy one, and if you don't eat it all up in meal #1, you will have cooked chicken on hand to turn into a lovely chicken salad.

Odds and Ends

Now that the path work is done, it is time to really get to work. I need to completely clean the beds, top dressing them with compost or decomposed wood chips, where necessary. The final touch will be to straighten out the bricks that line all the paths.
Cleaning the beds takes patience. I try to do one bed every two days.


It is late.
This must get ready for publication.
Have a good week.

Philip