October 13, 2019 - The frost is here.

As a gardener, I do not know of any weather event I pay more attention to than the first frost.
I know that gardeners, like farmers, always watch the weather.
Watching the weather is almost as common as complaining about the weather. The two things are often the same thing.
When it is dry, I watch for rain. I can remember many times opening the weather radar wondering whether that rain to the west will reach Iowa City. When it is brutally hot, we all watch for the first cool breeze. When it is brutally cold, we watch for the wind to shift. When it rains all the time, we look for a nice high pressure system.  It's always something.

But in terms of what there is to do about it, there is nothing that matches thinking about and then preparation for that first frost.

Let me be up front with you about why this matters. It matters because I have too many plants that have to come inside.
I suppose if I just had a vegetable garden I would worry about the peppers being toast. But mostly you cannot bring your vegetables inside. (I have brought my ghost pepper plant inside the last two winters.)
But I do not have vegetables.

But in addition to all my plants that come inside, I do have annuals. The wonderful Persian Shield plants, with their glorious purple color will toast. So will the zinnias. And the coleus.
But annuals are after all...annuals. They have life expectancies that end with the frost.
Actually I have a few annuals that I bring inside. And I take cuttings. Maybe that is one of the reasons why I bring in too many plants.

Just look at this zinnia from this past week.

Well, this week was frost-is-coming week. Friday night was forecast all week to get to 32, then it was going to be 31, then even 30. The next two nights were to be about the same.
I watched the competing forecasts. There was the weather channel on the phone and the TV. There was the local TV station. If they were different who would be right? By daytime Friday they were both the same. A frost was coming.

I could ignore it of course.
Maybe it will not even happen.
Maybe the coldest places will be out on the edge of town.
After all there are still leaves on the trees. What?

We have always been aware of the fact that frost, like rain, comes out of the sky. Maybe you did not know that. But places with leaf cover do not get that first frost. Places right next to a wall do not get a frost. It is the open areas where you see the first frost.
There are still leaves on the Elm tree in our front yard, and certainly there are many still on the Sycamore. It will not lose its leaves until December. Maybe it will not frost in parts of my yard.
But I engage in such wishful thinking at my peril, or rather the peril of my plants that need to come inside for the winter.



6:20 am Saturday morning: My little weather station says it is 34 on the front porch. The TV channel says it is 33 in Iowa City. There is a full moon.  Maybe we dodged the frost?
If we did the forecast is for two more cold nights. 33 degrees and 32 degrees.

Well there was only a very slight frost. It was not even a frost on the car windshield. The car was outside since the garage was full of...guess what.....plants.

The coleus that was not under the tree got toasted Friday night. The nearby Persian Shields were fine.

Part of preparation was bringing all tender plants to essentially staging area.

Here are the plants huddled on the front porch. They will stay there at least until Monday when the cold weather disappears for a week.
Some of them, like the big croton on the right, is now in the living room.

Pictures from the garden this week

It seemed like there was a butterfly for almost every flower.

Go Monarchs.

Is there a sports team called the Monarchs? Of course there was, from the Negro league in baseball. It was in Kansas City. Its most famous players were Jackie Robinson and Satchel Paige. Jackie Robinson played for them for one year. Ernie Banks also briefly played for them.

I suspect the name came from the reference to royalty rather than the butterfly.

It is seed collection time.

Maybe with most of the migrating plants in shelter of some sorts there will be time for seed collection. These are blackberry lily seeds.

There are always a few perennials that reemerge after the summer dry season. Ferns are like that.

The Elephant ears have been good this year. I just keep them in pots. They do fine. They will get knocked down by the frost when it comes. But then I will dig them up, dry them out a little and then store them for the winter, back in their pots.

I got several of these black elephant ears this summer. I will treat them the same as the green ones.

I really look forward to having them all season next year.

Julia's recipe
Chicken and potatoes

Here is the link to all Julia's recipes that have appeared on the blog. Really- all of them since she started posting several years ago.
https://mearskitchen.wordpress.com/

Sheet pan recipes seem to be in fashion, and this is a variant. The original recipe was from the NY Times cooking website. I changed the proportions of ingredients. And the method. And I used a 9" x 13" pan instead of a sheet pan. But the same idea and the same essential ingredients. It is a remarkably easy and flavorful recipe, ready in about 60 minutes.

Only 3 ingredients, plus salt and pepper: 4 chicken thighs (with skin and bones intact); 12 scallions; about 5-6 cups of sliced yellow or white potatoes (or red. Not russets). Plus the aforementioned salt and pepper.

I started by putting the chicken in the pan (skin side up), sprinkling both sides with salt and pepper.

I put the pan in the oven and turned the oven to 450 degrees. I set the timer for 30 minutes.

While the chicken was cooking, I cleaned the scallions and cut them in half cross-wise. And I washed the potatoes and sliced them into 1/4 - 1/2" slices. No need to peel.

After the timer went off, I took the pan out of the oven and the  chicken out of the pan onto a clean plate.

The bottom of the pan had chicken fat and juices in it. I put the scallions on top of the chicken stuff.

I sprinkled the scallions with a little salt and pepper, and then I spread the potatoes on top of the scallions. More sprinkling.

Then I put the chicken back on top and returned the pan to the oven for another 30 minutes, still at 450 degrees.

Here it is, fresh out of the oven. The chicken, as you can see, is nicely browned. The potatoes are done, as are the scallions (which you can't see).

And here it is, on the plate. The scallions and potatoes both tasted chickeny. The chicken was crispy.

You should feel free to vary the proportions of the vegetables. Less (or is it fewer?) potatoes, which would mean they would get crispier. Different vegetables, so long as thinly sliced. Maybe peeled and thinly sliced sweet potatoes. Or thinly sliced fall vegetables (which I don't use much) like parsnips or turnips, instead of or in addition to potatoes. I do think that the scallions are essential, for color and texture and flavor.

We rounded out the meal with a tomato/cucumber salad with red onion and kalamata olives and feta cheese for a nice colorful dinner.

Odds and Ends

As plants come back inside they return to the place where they have been before.

Sometimes it just seems right.

The airplant is back where it spends have the year. There is a zinnia flower, as I had worried we would lose them. Then there are Persian Shield cuttings.

I took 6 of them Friday evening. I will decide tomorrow whether I go all in and get another dozen.

The Iowa City Farmer's Market continues to be a high spot in our weekend. Some vendors got a hard freeze Friday night. One thing you can count on right before the freeze is that they pick all their peppers before the cold. There are bargains galore.

Have you seen warty pumpkins? I really like them.

The deer are back in the neighborhood. I see tracks but they do not eat much. It is not worth my energy at this point to spray that heavy duty deterrent.

But as I gathered up the plants to shelter I noticed the deer had nipped at the ghost pepper plant.

You have to wonder about their reaction.

In the fall I do begin to think more about time passing. I know that in the Spring I certainly do not say to myself there are only 63 days before Spring is over.

I was once asked about my favorite month. April was an easy answer. As I thought about it however I decided that I might prefer February or March. In those months the anticipation for Spring begins, even as the first signs of Spring emerge.

Remember snowdrops? Aconite? Crocuses?

I makes me go get the bulb catalogue. Where could I put in more of those bulbs?

So today, October 13, what are some landmark dates, and how far away are they?

December 21, 2019- 69 days- the winter solstice- the days will start getting longer-

February 3, 2020- 113 days- the Iowa caucuses

March 21, 2020- 160 days- by some calculations this is the first day of Spring 160 days

November 3, 2020- 387 days- election day

Better times are coming.

Look to my coming at first light on the fifth day.

No. No.

How about stay warm.

Philip