December 29, 2019 Week #5- Happy Holidays

Greetings and Happy Holidays

I have found this week totally confusing.
Not unpleasant. But confusing.
To start with you never really knew what day of the week it was.
Several days felt like a Monday. Several days felt like a Friday.

Then it was 60 degrees on Christmas day. That was 30 degrees above normal. That is a lot of degrees.
I am not complaining.
It actually was rather glorious, in a non December way.

The warm weather is waking up the garden.
I would worry about this but what good would that do.
Moreover this early awakening has happened before.





This picture from Christmas Day shows one of the snowdrop clumps I am used to seeing early in the Spring.














I was able to do garden yard work on the days I did not go to work. I was able to give the city lots of raked up Sycamore tree leaves and sticks. They will go to the great compost pile on the west side of town.
When that carefully rationed task was finished some of my previously unused muscles became a constant reminder that this week had been different.

The warm weather continues.
It was 50 degrees yesterday, with more of the same predicted for today.
Well it almost got to 50 and it rained a lot.
Julia joined me to pick up sticks for 30 minutes when there was a dry moment.
Even when it cools off in a few days the temperatures are suppose to be back in the 40's by midweek.


But let me talk about the Picture contest.

Last Week...there was a tie.
At the top were the Leocojum and the dogwood, both with 10 votes.
That hardly ever happens.
But in that case both contestants will advance to the next round.






The full voting was
Ruby Spider       7
Dogwood           10
Leucojum          10
Hellebore           4
Trillium             2



In this next week's contest there is one of the strongest groups all year. I have no idea who you will pick. I am struggling since I am not sure which I will pick.

Vote away.
Get your friends to vote.

Week #5

#1 Little Black Dwarf Iris- named Outspoken

 (May 6, 2019)

I love little dwarf bearded iris.
This one is named "Outspoken."
I got it in 2017.


It takes a few years for little iris to get going.
That seems true for a number of perennials.
You get the iris in late summer.
The first spring you will just have the one plant.
The next year, in theory, it has spread, giving you maybe 2-3.
By year 3 you should have a nice size clump.

You need good drainage for bearded iris.
If it is too wet they will rot.
Interestingly, other Iris species, like Siberian or Japanese, have roots, not rhizomes.
Those species, formally known as Iris siberica and Iris ensata, like it wet.
You can even see the Japanese iris growing in water.

#2  White Tree Peony

 (May 18, 2019)

I did it again. I had a closeup picked for the contest. When I went to add the bigger image as a bonus picture, I decided that I liked the bigger image better.
In that image you can catch the very subtile hint of pink.
There is nothing like a little water to enhance a picture.
Can you find the bug?

Many of you will remember my white tree peonies.
I grew them from seed.
The seed was from plants from my sister's garden outside of Washington, D.C.
There are 4 of these grown from seed peonies.
They are all white.
It took about 3-4 years for them to be big enough to bloom.
The first one bloomed for the first time in 2016.
That one had at least 6 flowers in 2019.

I could have one week of the contest just with these white peonies. Picking just one picture is too hard. Spoiler alert... There will be another one later in the contest.
Please see the closeup that almost was in the contest.

#3 Night Blooming Cereus 

 (September 18, 2019)

I liked this picture which captured the front of the one flower and the back of the one behind it.

I have grown orchid cactus for at least 20 years. I brought the first several plants back under a seat on the plane.
I grew this Night Blooming Cereus for years before it bloomed.
That was anticipation.
The bud develops over 3 weeks or so.
Then it really blooms at night, not really opening completely until maybe an hour or two after sunset.
Then by dawn they are finished. If you want to see them you have to come at night.
It will often set multiple buds at the same time. They usually will all bloom on the same night or the next night.
They will bloom several times over the summer.
This year, for whatever reason there was never more than 4-5 at a time.
There was that one year when there must have been 15.

This bloomed in September, which is not that unusual.
One year, maybe 2018, they bloomed and it was cold, maybe down to the upper 30's. Those blooms lasted until noon.
It really was strange to see them in the daytime.

#4 Snowdrops  

(March 28, 2019)

Since the first snowdrops came up this week, I thought I would include this picture, for sentiment.
As is the case with so many things sentiment may not translate into votes.

We can follow the current snowdrops and see what happens to them over the next month.

#5 Red Peony 

 (June 1, 2019)

What a great color.
I think I had to find some bright color to balance the white pictures.
This is a regular or herbaceous peony.
That means they die down each fall.
The tree peonies form a woody bush, allowing for larger flowers and taller plants.

I think I lost the name of this plant.
There was a wonderful nursery north of Cedar Rapids about 15 years ago. They specialized in peonies. You could go see them blooming by the hundreds in late May. You could pick one out and they would get you the roots in the fall.
We got 4-5 varieties. Some are still going. The key is having enough sun.

My mother had great peonies.
We used her peonies and roses at her memorial service in May.
We then brought a few buds back. We kept them in the refrigerator. When we got them out they bloomed, over a month later.

Bonus pictures

Here is the largest of the tree peony plants. It sets its buds in the fall. There must be closer to a dozen, getting ready for this coming May.



Here is a little video showing the 4 tree peonies this year before they bloomed. And there is an extra, at the end of the video.

This is a tree peony we planted 20 years ago.  It was not from seed with us. Its flowers really are the size of dinner plates.










Here is the closeup of the tree peony. Maybe you can see the bug now.

This is a single white herbascious peony.
















 

Little Iris

Here is an  slideshow I put together with just the little bearded iris. I am still learning the limits of this medium. This has 19 pictures in it. It uploaded rather easily. I will think about adding more in the future.

Here a couple of Night Blooming Cereus buds late afternoon before they bloomed that evening.















These were peony flowers at my mothers place in late July. They were picked as buds in mid May.
They lived in the refrigerator until we brought them out when we were getting the house ready for sale.
















Another couple of pictures.


















Here were two flowers with the previous nights flowers being finished.





How is this for a presentation. The flower in all that dark.





These are tree peony seeds. They are about as spectacular set of seeds that I have in the garden.
I did throw some more in the ground. It will be fun to watch if any come up.


This is one of the seed pods from the tree peonies.

Julia's recipe

Dressing aka stuffing

I decided to offer perhaps a bit late, a recipe for stuffing or dressing, as we are ending the prime turkey eating season. But dressing goes with baked chicken or roast pork, and sometimes one eats turkey off-season. I have two rules about dressing/stuffing: 1) have nothing to do with body cavities and 2) keep it simple.



Here are the ingredients: some nice, slightly stale bread, to yield about 9-10 cups of bread cubes; 1 stick (that is 1/2 cup) butter; some celery (to yield about 2 cups sliced thinly); some onion (to yield about 1-1/2 cups chopped); some stock or bouillon dissolved in warm water (about 1 to 2 cups) and seasonings: 1 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon rubbed sage (it's kind of fluffy and dry, not fresh or ground), 1/2 teaspoon each black pepper, paprika and basil.

You will note the lack of precision in amounts. That's the deal with this type of dressing. The proportions can be monkeyed with. But note also no oysters, no chestnuts, no cornbread, no sausage, no dried cranberries.




I cut the bread into roughly 1" squares, and I put the squares into a big bowl. I also lubed up a 9" x 13" pan and turned the oven on to 350 degrees.

Next I sliced the celery and chopped the onion. I melted the stick of butter in a big skillet and when it was melted, I added the chopped vegetables.












After the vegetables had cooked for about 5 minutes (on medium-high heat: aiming for softening not browning), I added the salt and other seasonings. I let the vegetables cook with the seasonings for another couple of minutes.















Then I dumped the veggies into the bowl of bread cubes and mixed it all up.


I added about 1 cup of liquid. I did not have any turkey stock on hand so I dissolved some chicken bouillon in hot water.

One adds liquid so that everything is moist, but not sopping wet. In my case, that was 1 cup of liquid. If you have really stale bread (and dressing is a good use of really stale bread), you might need to use more liquid to moisten.

Use chicken stock or turkey stock if you have it. Or for a vegetarian option, use vegetable stock or vegetable bouillon. We have made the all-veggie option on occasion, and it is just fine.





Then I dumped the dressing into the prepared 9" x 13" pan and put it in the oven, covered with aluminum foil, for 30 minutes.

After 30 minutes, the dressing was heated through and the flavors thoroughly mingled.

We like our dressing a bit crispy on top and around the edges, so I took off the foil and baked it for another 20 minutes.









Here it is, out of oven, looking not much different except browner.


















And here in the bowl. We had the dressing with a roasted turkey breast with the usual sides and with gravy. The dressing is good by itself and even better with a bit of gravy.


A final word about bread. As I said above, stale is good. Artisanal is good (that is, not Wonder bread or its equivalents), but not too artisanal. No cranberry pecan or parmesan or kalamata olive or chocolate. Also no rye bread. The bread is the background, and the vegetables and seasonings are the stars.

And another final word, this time about body cavities. When I was a kid, we had stuffing, and it went into the turkey. This seemed weird and sort of unseemly even then. Since then, I have learned that stuffing a bird can compromise the safety of the whole production. So I say, don't do it. Bake your simple, flavorful dressing separately and a Happy New Year to all.

Odds and Ends

Last week I mentioned the European bots that frequent the blog.
Perhaps because I called attention to them the Italian and Ukrainian bots have all but disappeared this week. The Russians? Still there.


While I worry about deer I do not worry about.....Feral Pigs
Maybe I should worry about them.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/16/science/feral-pigs-canada-texas.html?algo=identity&fellback=false&imp_id=573644790&imp_id=182847445&action=click&module=Science%20%20Technology&pgtype=Homepage

I add to look up the name of the little iris in the contest this week.
I thought I would share how I keep track of plants.
I should add as a disclaimer that this is what I try to do each time.

When I have time this is what I do to keep track of new purchases.
I scan and keep a copy of my invoice.
As I have prepared the order I make a table in Word for that purchase. In each row I put in the name and next to the name I put the picture. Most catalogues on line allow you to copy the picture. Finally I write down where I planted it.
I then have a document with all the purchases from that year.
If I have lost the label I have the best backup.


Have a quiet week.
This next year should be a good one.
We must make it so.
Philip