Sunday, January 26, 2020

January 26, 2020 - Week 9


Greetings from Week 9 of the Winter Picture Contest.

We are at Week 9 already.
The Winter, by the way I want to measure it, is more than half over.
January is slipping way.
We have only about a week to go before the evening robo calls in Iowa stop.
One call this past week was at 9 pm. I assume that was some trickster. I can not believe that any candidate would think that robo calling voters at 9 would be a good think.
Do you remember Donald Segretti?


It is caucus time in Iowa. This picture was from the blog in February, 2008. The blog has been around for many years.
When Hope as young the blog was there.
Twelve years ago.
We all were younger then.
The message is still there. (The sign is still in my garage. I do not want it stolen.)
Somehow during the dark of the winter, the idea that better times are coming seems more believable. And necessary.



Actually the days are getting longer. It is happening by an amount of time you can actually notice.
In the coming week the daylight will be 15 minutes longer than a week ago.
We went  right through the 5 p.m. barrier a week ago, in Iowa City, and have set our sights on 5:30.

However, at the moment we have entered a mostly no-sunshine period. If you look at that week ahead forecast there are only that little icon of clouds.
In fact the forecast is not hard to remember.
The highs will be from 31-34. The lows will be from 22-26.



We had some snow at the end of the week, maybe 4-5 inches over several days.
It was beautiful, covering all the trees with maybe an inch or two of wet snow. It was not so much as to be hazardous, and had left the trees by noon.

Wait. Wait. As I write this on Saturday afternoon, the sun just came out.





A year ago, this week, we had the 30 below temperatures.
It was called a Polar Vortex.
We really did that thing where you toss the pan of boiling water into the air.
It responded as advertised. It sizzled away before it hit the ground.
I will take 30 above and cloudy.



Last Week in the contest there was a runaway winner.




The full vote was:
Orange Clivia  25
Iris 4
Hosta 5
Orchid Cactus 6
Dogwood 4

While I do not usually seed the winners in the elimination rounds, I think I might just have to do that. This winner will have to be in the bracket opposite to the Monsella tulip from Week 3.



This Week
Week 9

#1 Pink Poppy 
(June 3, 2019)



Poppies are so wonderful they need little comment.
This is another Oriental Poppy, like Beauty of Livermore.
I have grown these poppies for 30 years. They are quite reliable, unless I forget where they are and plant something right on top of them.
They do go dormant for several months after blooming.
They have such wonderful centers.



      #2 Pink Lupine 
    (June 6, 2019)



I fell in love with lupines at a hotel in Greeley, Colorado, in 1991. There was a conference there. In the courtyard of the hotel there was a bed of only lupines, of all colors.
We then went to Estes Park, and Rocky Mountain National Park,  and saw the wild lupines at altitude.
So I started growing them.

There are not a long lived perennial. They will come back for maybe 1-2 years. Beyond that, not so much.
That want sun. But there is a fair amount of sun in the spring in my back yard. That is because the big Sycamore tree does not really get its leaves until maybe June.

There are places that you learn will be good for lupine.
They do not like the heat of the summer.
So the east side of the backyard is where I named a bed 'the lupine bed'.
But that was long ago. So many other things have been planted in that bed that there is not so much room for lupines.
Instead the bed on the Fairview side of the backyard, which does get hot afternoon sun, works.
Who knew? You try things and some things work.
I have lupines in that bed every year.
Some plants come back from the previous year. I also get some as volunteers, from seeds from the previous year.  Finally I grow some from seed. (See the Right Now section of this blog for the progress of the current seedlings.)

Lupines mostly finish by July. They do not die back entirely.
They come in many colors.
This one is white. There are also red and blue and pink.
They can become rather big, but mostly I do not have space for big.

Educational alert (skip if you wish)
Lupinus is the genus.
There are over 200 species.
They were grown by the Romans for their bean like seeds.
Today they can be an alternative to soy beans.
There is a lupine shrub. One wonderful specimen can be found in the Dubuque Arboretum, a wonderful place. (Alert- I found the picture. It was from 2011. It is in the bonus section.)
Here is the wikipedia link
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lupinus




#3 Japanese Iris 
(June 27, 2019)



This is a Japanese Iris. It is about the last Iris to bloom during the garden year. It blooms after the Siberian Iris. (The pardancandas, aka blackberry lilies, bloom in August. But they were only recently recognized as iris.)

I got all excited about Japanese Iris about 6 years ago. One thing about them is that they are big, bigger than the Siberian Iris.
I bought about a dozen new varieties. They all died. What a nice story. It does illustrate the fact, that as with so many things, there are going to be things that just do not work. The big question is whether you try again or move on to something else. I mention those choices with prejudging either one of them. I do still have a few, as the picture above attests.
Part of the problem in my garden is that these iris like lots of sun. That is just in short supply.
Maybe I will try again. If I do, I really must start by resetting the bed for the ones I have now.
If you reset a bed it will likely be a year or two before the plants recover and bloom.
Maybe I will have to decide if the half day sun, which is all I can provide, is enough.

But the reward can be immense, as you can see from this picture.





                         #4 Cactus flower 
                           (August 15, 2019)



I have grown these cactus plants for 13 years. The first plant was a gift from a neighbor.
It made some sides shoots, having been one itself. It bloomed for the first time in 2011. They make such big buds. That first one was so exciting.
This year this one bloomed on the same night as one of the night blooming epiphyllum.
That was exciting. There was a lot to see at 10pm with the flashlight and the camera.
This was taken with the flash function.
I did not need any big cardboard to put behind the flower.

There is a slide show of cactus images in the bonus section.



#5 Red Zinnia 
(October 10, 2019)




Zinnias.
I liked this picture with the yellow bling along the edge of that middle.


Vote away.
I do think 2 people can vote on the same computer, if there are two of you out there.



Bonus Pictures


This next picture almost made the contest.




You can see the growth.



The lupine flowers do get tall. For that reason a heavy rain can really take its toll.






Here are the seedlings in the basement. I took off the cover as some of the little plants have secondary leaves. They also were brushing up against the top of the cover.













Here is the very large lupine bush, found at the Dubuque Arboritum.




















Here are some cactus pictures from 2019, including several of the oldest of all my cactus plants.



It has cactus plants on top of cactus plants.






Here is the full bloom of one plant this past summer.






Here is how the biggest cactus plant is spending the winter. If anything the plants on top are getting bigger.
















Here is a slide show with cactus plants over the years.





Right Now
This is cattleya orchid Arctic Star.


This picture was taken this last Tuesday, January 21.



What a season it has been for this plant.
During the Summer it hangs in the trees in the backyard.
It sets its flower stalks, or spikes as they are called, during the summer.
Several spikes grew this past summer to the point that I knew it was going to bloom sometime in September. It started to bloom on September 7, my birthday.



I brought it inside that day to protect it from a thunderstorm.
It lived in the dining room, where it got light from a south facing window.
It had 5 spikes I believe. 1-4 flowers came from each spike.
2 of the spikes bloomed in September.
It actually went to an orchid show in September and came back with a red ribbon.



The flowers lasted several months.
For a brief time it went back to the basement and lived under grow lights.
When the remaining spikes started blooming it came back upstairs to its place in the dining room. That was about December 1.
It has been blooming ever since.
Here was the official portrait from several weeks ago.








Several flowers were done 10 days ago.
















But as you can see from the lead picture the last spike is still going. It is in its 5th month.
Truly remarkable.



Here is a slide show with pictures of Arctic Star, with some Louis Armstrong.




Here the biggest of the phalanopsis that are blooming at the moment.





Look at several phals, as they are called. They vary incredibly by size and color.




Julia's recipe
 Chocolate frosting


Our grandson Christopher turned 3 recently, and so I sent him a dozen gluten-free chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting and sprinkles. I offered to bake cupcakes, and he requested the all-chocolate-plus-sprinkles package. I made them and shipped them because this is what grandparents do. The hardest part was the shipping. Christopher and his moms live in Portland Maine, so I had to construct a two-level, compartmentalized cupcake insert to fit in a box, to fit in another box with bubble wrap all around. They made it intact. We had a face-time call on the day of arrival, showing Christopher chowing down. I think it helps that it is winter in Iowa and in Maine so baked goods stay cold in transit. 

Those of you familiar with this blog may recall that I posted a recipe for gluten-free vanilla cupcakes some months ago. Gluten-free vanilla cupcakes become gluten-free chocolate cupcakes by substituting 1/4 cup of cocoa powder for 1/4 cup of the gluten-free flour. It's that easy.



The ingredients for chocolate frosting: 1 cup butter (softened); 1/2 cup cocoa powder; 4 cups powdered (aka confectionary) sugar; 4-5 tablespoons milk (preferably not skim); 2 teaspoons vanilla and a pinch (maybe 1/8 teaspoon) of kosher salt.

An electric hand mixer is very useful. I have made frosting with a wooden spoon, and it's much more tedious.








First I worked on the butter to get it to be creamy; then I added the cocoa and the salt and mixed them in.

















Next I added the powdered sugar, 1 cup at a time. After 2 cups were mixed in, the frosting was very thick indeed so I added the vanilla and about 2-3 tablespoons of milk.

Then I added the rest of the powdered sugar and the rest of the milk, and mixed on high speed for a minute or two. This gave me the consistency I was looking for. Be prepared to add a bit more milk if the frosting is too stiff.









Here is the finished product. I left the cupcakes in the muffin tins to frost them as I thought it would be a more stable situation.















I used a 2 tablespoon disher to dole out the frosting.

















After I had portioned out the frosting, I used a little spatula to spread it around.


Lastly, I decorated the cupcakes with sprinkles from the Stringtown Grocery, an Old Order Amish country store north of Kalona which sells antic sprinkles: tiny pink pigs; assorted black, white and brown cows; butterflies; snowflakes; letters of the alphabet and numbers. Enough variety to have 2 cupcakes of each kind.

This recipe makes enough frosting to cover a 9" x 13" cake or 24 cupcakes. I froze the extra frosting (about 1-1/2 cups) for the next time chocolate frosting is called for.




An afterthought picture. Christopher, Elisabeth and Katie were at our house in mid-December for Katie's ordination. We had an early birthday party for Elisabeth, and I made gluten-free cupcakes. With chocolate frosting, as shown.

















Odds and Ends

I found this strange weather story this week, worthy of being found in the Onion.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/21/us/frozen-iguanas-miami-weather.html?action=click&module=Latest&pgtype=Homepage


For those who are following these things, this past week the Ukranian bots returned. The Italian ones are still gone. The Russians have the biggest contingent.


As I was going through my pictures I found this.
What is that?




The picture is from October when we were worried about a frost. That is a covered jade plant.







Be safe.
Stay warm.
Join us in making this a better place.
Philip and Julia

1 comment:

Pat said...

I'm commenting late because we're just recovering from a busy weekend with visitors. Those slide shows were the best! Each one seemed especially appropriate for its subject: cactuses (a plural I prefer to cacti) and the prize-winning orchid. The music for each was the perfect accompaniment.

I voted for the poppy not only because it was ravishing, but because it reminded me of 1940s and '50s Parisian retro lingerie, which was often of that precise shade of pink silk, with narrow black (or dark brown, like that chocolate frosting!) silk ribbon as trimming. The slips and nightgowns were utterly wonderful. Like the poppy.