July 7, 2019 Finishing touches

          I sometimes wonder when is the best time in the garden.
Near the top of the list is early spring. There are all those crocuses and aconite and snowdrops. There are no weeds and no bugs.

But then I think about bluebell season/

This year the weather got stuck when the bluebells were out. That is just about the best              time to be stuck. The bluebells must have lasted about 3 weeks, as the temperatures                    stayed above freezing but did not get much above 50.  Remember temperatures in the 50's? Remember temperatures in the 60's?

But an argument can certainly be made that right now, early July, is the best time in the garden. The lilium are going strong. The daylilies are starting. The annuals have taken hold.

Last year the local garden club, Project Green, had a garden walk. They had done that sort of thing for a long time. Our garden was one of about 7-8 gardens featured in the City.  It was fun. The event was early, on June 23. It was for one Saturday afternoon. There were lots of people. It was an event to circle on the calendar.
But the high summer was not here yet. The daylilies had not really started.


This year Project Green organized something different. It is called Open Gardens. It is next weekend, July 13 and 14. For 5 hours each, on Saturday and Sunday, about 30 gardens in town will invite people into the gardens to see what is going on. The times are from 10-3.

I was asked to participate. I agreed. The amusing thing is that my garden is always open. People do not need an event to come visit.
But some people have wonderful gardens... in their backyards. People cannot see their wonders unless someone puts out a welcome sign.
I sometimes do not remember how fortunate I am to have this garden on the corner, where people can see most of it just by walking by.

So you all of course have a special invite. You can come anytime.

Right Now

The garden is approaching the height of the year.

The Asiatic lilies have been one of the stars of the garden this last few weeks.  They are finishing,  this week.

I did spend some time last night looking at lilium catalogues. This is the time to engage your fantasies. Have you ordered Night Rider or Fiamma? If you want a treat look up a new introduction called Lionheart. Unfortunately it was sold out from this one place I frequent.

Here is Night Rider with all the flowers blooming.
I really must get more and grow this with some other colors. Imagine if there was a yellow or an orange, or a white, that bloomed at the same time.





This was Fushion.
It is a cross between an Easter lily and something called a pardalinum
What is that you ask? Well it is a species also called the leopard or panther lily, found on the west coast in damp areas.
It was part of the lilium order of 4 new varieties from last fall.
Fushion looks a little like the tiger lily that you see places.















The yellow lily is Nashville, planted with Fiamma which has been blooming for several weeks it seems. At least in the first year it stands tall and has a solid stem.
(Can I quietly add that it was left alone by the occasional deer.)






This next picture is the Michigan lily. It is a species of wildflower found...wait for it....in Michigan. Actually it is a wildflower that can be found in many parts of the upper midwest.
I have had it in the garden for a long time. It spreads.

One thing that makes it a little different is that the leaves appear in a whorled pattern. That can be your new word for the week. That means the leaves on the stem are all together making sort of a circle.
There are three basic types of leaf arrangements found in trees and shrubs, and apparently lilium.
Those would be alternate, opposite and whorled.

The daylilies have started in earnest.















This is Ruby Spider. I expect it will be one of  the focal points of interest next weekend. There must be 200 buds on this plant.




Daylilies come in all sorts of shapes. This is a small double one.










Amidst all that color there also is anticipation.



This is the one cactus plant with buds at the moment.
I really do not know what the others are waiting for.














I just noticed that this Night Blooming Cereus had 3 buds.
Then I remembered that if any visitor comes at 10 am, the flower will be over.


I would like to go on the garden walk that starts at 6am.

Julia's recipe
The best biscuit

All of 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.
Biscuits

Sometimes a person wants a quick bread with supper, as we did recently when we had steak salad for dinner. Cornbread is good; biscuits are also good and quicker. This recipe is from the original version of the Betty Crocker cookbook, which came to me from my grandmother's house. I don't know how or why she came by it. She was a natural-born, no-recipes-needed cook, and English was her fourth language (after German, Hungarian and some sort of Serbo-Croatian, as required in the Balkans in the first half of the 20th century).  Why an American housewives cookbook? No idea, but I keep the cookbook because it was hers. I find that the recipes in this early BC are a bit different than later editions and sometimes provide variations on a basic recipe not found later on.


Here are the players: 2 cups all-purpose flour; 1 tablespoon white sugar;1 tablespoon (that's 3 teaspoons) baking powder; 1/2 teaspoon salt; 6 tablespoons butter (or margarine or shortening, if you're dairy averse)  and 2/3 cup milk (or plain almond milk).

I turned the oven on to 450 degrees. I know it's summer, but the whole process takes no more than 30 minutes, and we had the ceiling fan running.





I started by measuring the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt into a big bowl and stirring the dry ingredients around to combine.

Then I cut the butter into little pieces and added it, using a pastry cutter to work it in. A pastry cutter is a semi-circular device with a handle at the top and a set of blades (not sharp, however) at the bottom, expressly made to cut butter or shortening into flour. It's handy, but not essential. One can use one's hands (and one has, on occasion).

Next I stirred in the milk.


The dough was a little dry so I added an extra tablespoon of milk. Then I dumped the dough onto this plastic mat, which I had dusted with about 2 tablespoons of flour to prevent sticking.

The mat is intended to assist in pie-crust rolling (hence the concentric circles), but it is a nice no-stick surface. A piece of parchment would work or you could go ahead and make a mess on your counter-top. I once had a kneading cloth, a piece of canvas sold for this purpose, but I gave it up. Unless one washed it after every use, it became kind of gross.  The pie-crust rolling mat is easy to wash off and rolls up between uses.

I kneaded the dough to incorporate the unincorporated bits and then just to be kneading, for a total of about 1 or 2 minutes. Not too much (unlike yeast doughs that usually want a lot of kneading). Kneading in this context means folding the back half of the dough up toward you and then pushing down and away from you with the heel of your hand.  Folding up and pushing down. Then I patted the dough into a rectangle about 4" x 8" - I forgot to measure, which was about 3/4" thick. I did measure the thickness.

I cut the dough in thirds lengthwise and then into thirds across for 9 squarish biscuits. I put them on a baking sheet, popped them into the oven and turned the timer on for 6 minutes. At 6 minutes, I turned the baking sheet around and then turned the timer on for 5 minutes.




When the timer dinged, the biscuits were done, much taller than 3/4", flaky and slightly browned on top.












Here they are - slightly irregular in shape, which is fine with me. One could (and one has) use a biscuit cutter to make round biscuits. If so, do not twist the cutter: straight down, straight up. Twisting the cutter can seal the sides of the dough and inhibit rising. And you should dip the cutter into a bit of flour so it won't stick.

You could jazz your biscuits up with 1/3 cup of shredded Parmesan cheese (it's a dry cheese and won't mess up the wet to dry ratio) or 1/4 cup minced chives - either one added at the beginning with the flour.

You could turn the biscuits into shortcake by adding 2 tablespoons of sugar instead of 1 tablespoon.

I have had limited success in making gluten-free biscuits, as the gluten is central to the whole operation. The texture of gluten free biscuits is sandy, sort of, and they don't rise as well. But we have made gluten free shortcake, by substituting gluten-free flour and proceeding. Of course, shortcake is for strawberry or peach shortcake where the shortcake is a supporting player in service of sweetened fruit and whipped cream. And who would complain about the texture of the shortcake?

Odds and End

New additions



This wonderful addition to the garden came from Springfield.
I think it will have to come in for the winter. It is made of clay and with those holes I think the snow and ice would do major damage.



















This ceramic chicken got to go outside this week. It was a great gift earlier this year. It seems equally at home inside or out.

Tool endorsement

Perhaps the most useful tool as I tackle the weeds every so often is this swivel hoe.
It seems to put less stress on the back that its traditional cousin.

It is particularly helpful in spiffing up borders.















Not all goes well in July.
Let me complain just a little.
First there is the heat.
It has been in the 90's every day this week.
I think the worst part is when you wake up in the morning and it is 75 outside.
I got up yesterday at 4:30 to be ready to embark on a gardening spree before 6.
By late morning I really did not want to brave the heat.

Then there are the bugs. You expect mosquitoes. You can put on bug stuff. I do not feel like doing that time after time, each day.
But now the Japanese beetles have come back.
I had so hoped that the polar vortex had killed them a little.

We need rain. We had almost a half an inch this week. But temperatures in the 90's begin to toast the plants.
I guess I will just have to water the annuals.
It has happened before.
It was so much easier if you did not have to water anything.

It is time for sales at the garden centers.
There is always room for a few more of everything.
Yesterday I picked up some Persian shields.

That is it for the week.
Stay cool and do come visit next weekend if you can.
Philip