February 16, 2019. Week #12 of the Picture contest

What an odd week. After 6 straight days of temperatures in the 30's there was a little snow followed by a very short blast of cold air on Thursday. I mean cold air. Friday was one of those crystal clear days with a high temperature of 8. The low on Thursday night getting us to Friday was minus 9. Julia and I both got out again our new neck warmers that Katie made for us. They seem to be made out of some kind of special fleece. I did not wear mine on Friday morning since I had  to go to court. When I pull my neck warmer off, over my head, the static electricity makes my hair goes everywhere for a few hours.
Then yesterday was in the 40's. The forecast highs for the next 7 days is 44, 40, 43, 24,17, 27, 42.
I guess that is living in the between time.

Yesterday was lovely. Sunshine, with no wind. There was a little bit of melting.
Here is the snowdrop clump we have been following, having made it through the very cold Thursday night.



Perhaps with a sign of things to come, here was an almost open winter aconite.



I will look at it again in 24 hours.

Last Week in the contest

We had another tie. I must think of a tie breaking method. Maybe rank order voting.
Ties can be so frustrating.
Actually the bicolor lily received a vote late on Saturday that pulled it into a tie with the other two.
So the three winners were the bluebells, the bicolor lilium, and the pink orchid.




The full voting was
Pink orchid 9
Bicolor lily 9
Weed 5
Primal Scream 7
Bluebells 9

Week #12

#1 Blue Siberian Iris 
June 1, 2019

I love the color Blue. It might be my favorite color, at least in a flower. My grandson Christopher, who just turned 3, really keeps track of our favorite colors. I should let him know.  He thinks, and will tell you if you ask,  that yellow is my favorite color.

I also like Siberian Iris. This is a true blue Siberian Iris. Mostly we think of them as purple.
I have reset several beds of those iris in the last 2-3 years. I look forward to how they are going to do this spring.
Spring. Spring. Spring.
It will be coming soon.
I expect it may already showing up further south.

What do you particularly look forward to in your garden?
I will work on a top ten list.

#2  Allium Nigrum

 June 8, 2019

This allium has been around in the garden for so long I have no idea when it was planted. It is not as splashy as the big purple ones. I had to look up its name. It is allium nigrum.
I picked out this picture for the contest on the second or third time through the pictures.
The pattern in the picture was one of the best all year. Please look at a further closeup in the bonus section.

Allium are in the genus Allium. Do you feel smarter yet?
In that genus are onions and of course, garlic. I now learn that allium is the Latin word for garlic.

Allium nigrum is its own species.
It even has its own wikipedia page. It is really not worth viewing. The one interesting fact is that this allium does not smell like an onion. Its common name is black garlic. There is no explanation for that name. Julia asked if the bulb was black. I said I had not dug it up to see.

This is a late spring bulb that blooms and then disappears.

#3 Black Asiatic Lily
named (K)night Rider  

June 23, 2019

This Asiatic lily was new to the garden in 2019. It has only been developed in the last decade.
In what is about my best accolade, I got more in the fall of 2019.

Black can be rather spectacular in the garden.
It is rather rare too, perhaps adding to its allure.

Actually as I read about this lily I learn it is a cross between an Asiatic lily and a Trumpet lily. Who knew?  I guess they can do that.

I buy most of these newer lilium bulbs in groups of 3. That way they made a rather nice clump. Several stems will often come from each bulb.

I was not sure what I was going to write about the name.
Maybe I was just going to call this lily a "black lily" and leave it at that.
But I do not think that is enough.

The bulb in commerce is called Night Rider.
The dictionary definition of Night Rider is unfortunately just what you think it is, if you stop to think about it: "A member of a secret band who rides masked at night doing acts of violence for the purpose of punishing or terrorizing."
I think we all know in this country who they were.
Why in the world is there a plant in my garden named this?

First I should say that  the problem with the name had not occurred to me until Julia mentioned it to me as I was starting to write this week's blog.
That is the way insensitivity can be.
Yesteray, when I finally connected the name to the definition,  I wrote a series of emails to the lily nursery where I had obtainer the bulbs. Remarkably they were quite responsive.
This is what I was told.
The plant was developed in Holland. The exact developer was not identified.
In Holland there is a governmental review board for names. The name Night Rider would have had to pass that review board to go into commerce. It is doubtful that anyone on that board connected the name to an historical band of terrorists in the United States.
So what about the name? Think about the fact that this lily was developed in the last decade.
Old American TV shows were/are popular in Europe, including one called Knight Rider. It originally was on TV from 1982-86. There was a movie in the 90's and a one year revival on TV.
In fact if you google Night Rider you will first get asked if you mean Knight Rider.
I am told that the plant was likely named for that show. In support of this theory there is another popular oriental lily introduced in Holland called Baywatch.
I am told that the Dutch are not good at translating Dutch into English and then spelling in English.
I am also told that maybe there is no silent k in Dutch.
So there you have it.
This lily should have been called Knight Rider.
I will call it that.
I will ask the nursery to figure out what it can do to change the name.
It is a small thing but from small things...

# 4 Pink and white daylily 

August 4, 2019

This lovely lily is called  Purify My Heart.   It is one of the few new daylilies to have been added to the garden in 15 years. (I went through a 10-15 year period ending in 2005 where daylilies were an obsession.) I got this plant a few years from some nice people over near South English. They have a lovely garden and open it and sell a few daylilies every once in a while.

#5 Orange Zinnia 

August 24, 2019

It was a good year for big zinnias. It was a good year for zinnia pictures.
This is the fourth Zinnia in this year's contest.
This one is so different.
All those petals.
Orange is good.
Sometimes as an afterthought to the contest I have a week or two of team competition. The teams can be determined by color, or month, or even the first letter of the name.

I should stop.

There are your contestants for week 12.
One more week before the playoffs.

Bonus Pictures

Here is the closeup of the allium cluster. You can see the individual parts of the flowers.

This is the big blue allium I have around the garden. These big bulbs do divide if you have the energy to try to find them in the fall.




I liked this picture since you could see the flowers that had not yet opened.

More (K)night rider

Somewhere I read that this flower was a really deep red. Well, I think it can have a reddish hue.

Julia's recipe

Salmon baked in spicy oil

As I have mentioned, we belong to a CFS (that's community supported fishery) from Sitka, Alaska so we always have some kind of fish in the freezer. I never had salmon as a kid; it has been a learning experience to have lots of excellent salmon to play with. This recipe is from the New York Times cooking website, and I wasn't sure about it when I read it. But I persisted, and it turned out (with a couple of tweaks) to be great.



Here are the players: a piece of salmon (I am guessing the salmon weighed in at about 3/4 lb.); 3/8 cup (that's 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons) olive oil; 1-1/2 teaspoons red pepper flakes; 1-1/2 teaspoons coriander seed; 1-1/2 teaspoons fennel seed; 1/4 or so teaspoon smoked paprika; maybe 1 teaspoon kosher salt and 1/2 teaspoon black pepper.

Plus the non-cooked elements: 2 cups chopped English cucumber; 2 cups little tomatoes, halved; 1 cup chopped parsley; 1/2 cup crumbled (or cubed) feta and 1/4 cup kalamata olives, halved.




First I crushed the coriander seed and fennel seed in a mortar and pestle. I added the red pepper flakes and paprika and 1/2 teaspoon of salt and 1/4 teaspoon of pepper to the little bowl with the coriander and fennel.

Then I turned the oven on to 300 degrees.

I heated the olive oil in a skillet that could go in the oven and added the spice mix. I turned the heat to low and let the spices heat up for 5 minutes.


Meanwhile, I unwrapped the salmon, checked for pin bones (none on this occasion) and patted the fish dry.





Then I put the salmon in the oil, skin side down, and I spooned some of the oil over the fish.

I put the skillet in the oven, and I let the fish cook for about 15 minutes. It's done when the internal temp is 120 degrees. (Or it flakes!)








Meanwhile, I finished prepping the non-cooked elements. I peeled and cut up the cucumber (lengthwise in half, then into little chunks); washed and halved the tomatoes; halved the olives; cubed up the feta and took the parsley off the stems.




I arranged the vegetables around the edge of an attractive platter, holding off on some of the feta and on the parsley. I sprinkled the rest of the salt and pepper on the vegetables.














Here is the fish, out of the oven. Don't forget (as I did momentarily) that the skillet handle is hot.













I removed the fish from the skillet and plopped it in the middle of the platter, then added the last of the feta and the parsley. Last of all, I drizzled some of the spicy oil over the whole thing.

There was spicy oil left over. I poured that over the asparagus we had as a side.

This is a very pretty dish, for those times when presentation is a must. And the contrast between the warm fish and the cold vegetables is wonderful. The oil did good things for the asparagus (we have also made this dish with a side of green beans and the oil is good for beans too).

I even liked the parsley. Normally we don't use fresh parsley, but we had some on hand, and so it got to participate. I understand that the fish holds up well as a leftover, but we have never had any left over.

Odds and Ends

The bots are back.
I have a way to look at statistics for the blog.
The site itself gives us a number of page views in the past week.
That number varies widely, from a low of perhaps 250 up to over 500 sometimes.
This week it got to 500 again.
Well I have written about what I refer to as the bots.
They are my imaginary visitors from foreign countries, just probing for opportunities to make trouble. Maybe the blog has some way to infiltrate the Democratic servers of Precinct 17 in Iowa City.
Strangely the Italian bots have been the most active over the years. They have visited over 16,000 times in the 13 years of the blog existence. After I mentioned them on this blog 5-6 weeks ago, they disappeared, until this past week. Now they are back. They have accounted for over 30% of the visits this past week. As they appeared, the number of bots from Russia dropped, quite a bit.

Two pictures taken in the last few days sum up this time of year.



This is the little hibiscus looking out the window at the still snowy back yard.













This is the little hanging pumpkin we see each morning as we head to work. It has a cheerful smile, mostly frozen in place.



Have a good week.
As we gaze at the cold in so many places
let us hope the melting continues.
Philip