March 29, 2020. There is a winner

For the last 17 weeks there has been a picture contest, featuring flowers from the garden year 2019.

Before I say a thing about this remarkable week

Here is you winner.
The Monsella tulips

It is a truly wonderful combination of two of the brightest colors in the entire spectrum.

After all this voting, the poll is going to take a week off.
I will think about next week.
I will come up with something.
Maybe I will try a daily account of what new I found that day.
Yesterday it was Dutchman's breeches.

But in this scary time it is all the more reason to stay in touch with each other.
The garden blog will continue.
I will tell you what is going on with the garden.
I will show you pictures of what could be in the next contest, and there will be another contest.
I do so like to hear from you.
Tell me anything. Just keep the connection going.

What is happening now?

Let me come back to reality.
The week started last Sunday with....snow.
We did not have a lot. Not much more than an inch. But it stuck to everything  making for a wonderful next morning.

The Monday morning walk was a good way to start the week.
It got me started taking my camera with me on the walk.
This was looking down Ralston Creek, which is a block from our house.

Pansies
I bought them last Saturday.
I started planting them this week.
On Wednesday I planted this little garden bed I tend at church.
I particularly enjoyed planting them as the bed is mostly empty this time of year. Annuals are what I use for this celebration. I also did not worry about deer.







I took two pansies to the office, to add to the plant stand.
Pansies can be a short term house plant, which can brighten up any corner.

Crocuses

It is their time.

First there are 2 videos.

Then a slideshow. I continue to explore the limits of this additional feature.

Here are some other pictures from this week.
There really is an explosion going on.
Sometimes I just stop and just examine any square foot of garden. I then see how many different things are coming up.
Here is a yellow hellebore, in the backyard. There is another yellow one in the front yard. It is about a week behind this one.





This is a corydalis. It is a Spring bulb that blooms at the same time as this little scilla or squill. What a wonderful combination. I should mass plant these bulbs to have the flowing blue be flowing red and blue.
OK- I just added it to the "get list".





The hellebores and the crocuses play well together.





Bluebells in March. It could happen. This one is about ready to pop,







A few inside pretties.
I have a cutting of the double red hibiscus. It can take months for a hibiscus to root.
But the plant on the right was grown from a cutting.

Julia's recipe

Chocolate mousse
Here is the link to the other blog with all of Julia's recipes.

https://mearskitchen.wordpress.com/

Chocolate mousse is celebratory food and also comfort food. So we should give it a whirl. Literally -as this version is made in a blender. Philip found the recipe on the NYT cooking site, and he has made it several times. Pretty darn easy. The only downside (if it is a downside) is that the recipe makes a lot of very rich chocolate mousse. You can eat it for a few days - nothing wrong with that or maybe you have a bigger family at home than we do. Or you could dish it out into paper cups and distribute to your neighbors. Like May baskets only you should probably phone first so the squirrels don't get it first. 



The ingredients: 12 oz. (!) dark eating chocolate (not unsweetened), chopped up; 1-1/2 cups whipping cream; 4 eggs; 1/2 cup white sugar; 1/4 cup espresso (we made instant - you could also make strong strong coffee); 1/4 cup plain water; 1 teaspoon vanilla extract and 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt.

The recipe also called for 1/4 cup of rum or Marsala or brandy which we did not have and did not use.





Fir

First Philip whipped the cream with an electric hand mixer until it was nicely whipped (but still soft-ish). He set that in the refrigerator to await further developments.














Next the chocolate. We rarely get to use the cleaver, which I think we got from Katie's old friend Denny. Or maybe he didn't give it to us so much as abandon it in a place where it came into our possession.













Here is chocolate, chopped. You chop chocolate by shearing pieces off diagonally. In this case, the chocolate does not need to be finely chopped, so one pass through the bars with the cleaver did the trick.














The chocolate went into the blender, followed by the 4 eggs.














They sat there while Philip heated up the 1/4 cup of water into which he poured (and stirred) the 1/2 cup of sugar. When it came to a boil, he turned it off.

Note the cup next to the saucepan. That is about 1/2 cup of hot espresso. Philip used some (see below) and drank the rest.









Philip started pouring the hot sugar solution through the little hole in the top of the blender lid, while running the blender.














The result was pretty much magic. The chocolate melted and the eggs cooked and were completely homogenized.

After blending in the sugar syrup, he did the same pouring-while-blending with the 1/4 cup of espresso and the vanilla and the salt.

He ran the blender for about 1 minute after everything had been added, at which point the mixture was completely smooth and pretty much cooled off.





Then he put a dollop of the chocolate into the whipped cream and folded it in. "Folding" - using a spatula to make big scooping motions, out to the edge of the bowl then down to the bottom and then up again. Easier to do than to explain.











He kept adding chocolate in dollops and then folding until all the chocolate was in the bowl of whipping cream. The recipe wanted him to keep folding until no white streaks remained but that seemed silly.












Here we have 8 pretty good sized bowls of mousse. Dessert for a week or for a crowd.

Odds and Ends

The week started with snow.
It ended with storms and then a clearing.
We had over an inch of rain yesterday.
The week also ended with a 70 degree afternoon, and even some open windows.
By the end of the day I was wearing shorts.
Along the way there were some what can best be described as grey days.


It seems like there is so much more daylight at the moment.
We broke through the 7 a/m/ barrier without much of a thought.
We can have dinner during the daylight.
But...
We had cloudy/foggy mornings this past week where it seemed like daylight was regressing.
Dark was the word.


We have a garden writer for our local newspaper named Judy Terry.
I enjoy her columns each week.
This weekend she wrote about soil temperatures.
Mostly I do not think about soil temperatures.
As between peas, spinach and lettuce, which do you think will grow/germinate at a lower temperature?
Judy will tell you.
https://www.press-citizen.com/story/life/2020/03/27/early-spring-here-and-some-veggies-ready-planting/5082690002/


I will close with this picture from last night, after supper.

That is the moon and Venus. I think I have to work on my focus for pictures of celestial bodies.
But you get the picture.
After a stressful and scary week, the calm was appreciated.
Stay safe.
We will get rid of that idiot.
Philip