April 19, 2020- Are we there yet?

On long car rides, a voice from the back seat would sometimes ask "Are we there yet?"
Could that be the most asked question ever?
What other questions could even compete?
Maybe "How long?"
You could add your own suggestions.
"Are we lost?"
People who know small children would nominate the one word question "Why?"
This week in Iowa, gardeners asked the question  "are we there yet?"
Other question include
When it will warm up again?
When will it really be spring?
On Wednesday it even surprise-snowed. That is a snow you did not see coming.
(Part of that is falling asleep before the evening weather.)
But on Wednesday we woke up to find...




And as if that were not enough, after the Wednesday snow had all melted (by noon), there was this on Friday morning.



Maybe you get the picture.
Actually there were many nice snow pictures, all which were gone by noon. (See pictures further down.)
And it did in fact warm up to 60 yesterday.
Maybe Spring is here to stay.

Last week we revisited the 2008 finals in the picture contest. That was a good year. We elected Obama. The economy tanked. At some point in the future, how will we look back at 2020?

But you voted last week. The runaway winner in 2020 for 2008 was the blue crocus.

Here was the final vote

For history buffs, the winner in 2008 was the pink waterlily.

This week we will revisit the finals in 2010

Here you go.

# 1 Bluebells and epimedium

#2 Crown Imperial  Fritillaria

#3 Pink Poppy with green background

#4 Peach Iceland Poppy

#5 Blue Morning Glory

#6 Snowdrops 

Vote Away

Daily journal- the week of April 12-18, 2020

Sunday
What a strange Easter.
Isolated.
No church.
Well, we watched a service on the computer.
Not the same.
Church is all about the people.
Remember that little game with your fingers?
Here is the church. Here is the steeple. Open the door, and see all the people.
We did color Easter eggs.







At some point we learned that permanent Sharpies worked with egg decoration.















It was suppose to be rainy all day.
Instead it was sunny for a good portion of the day.
After 'church' I even went over to our little garden plot and worked in another patch. I am getting out the grass clumps and supplementing the soil with decomposed wood chips from the paths in the garden.
I met a neighbor a few plots over, who also was doing the garden plot thing for the first time.
It was good to talk to a person.
It was also warm. Using a shovel does that.

It was also the last warm day for taking pictures.



Here is that wonderful trillium that I have had for many years. It stays the same, year after year.















This is a white anemone, sometimes called a windflower.

















I did not photoshop this picture. It is a native dog tooth violet. Unlike the one that grows by the thousands and has a white flower, this one is obviously yellow. I think the little blue streamers must have been from a scilla behind it.







Monday morning-
The rain ended early on Sunday evening, having given us about an inch.
The moon was out, but waning.
Having gotten down to 30 degrees on our front porch, it was every inch the 'crisp clear morning'.
We went for a walk before work. (Remember work- we are still doing it.)

This is one of the trees in the neighborhood. We have always thought of it as a tulip tree. We now know that is actually the name of something else. But this is still a tulip tree to us.

The lesson is that 30 degrees is ok. Go below that and the tulip trees are toast.










There are certain plants that react to below freezing temperatures by bending way over. The hellebores are quite predictable that way.




I had not remembered that peonies were the same way. They are going to have quite the workout this week. By noon they were mostly recovered, which is more than I could say for the temperatures. We got to maybe 42, with a brisk northwest wind.



Some of the edge of this cold is limited as there is the promise of a wonderful weekend. Sunny and 60 degrees. But the weekend seems like a long way away on a Monday.


Tuesday morning
Colder this morning. It was 28 as measured from the device on our front porch.
I actually covered two things in the garden last night.
One was the clump of 8 shoots from the hardy slipper orchid in the back yard.
The other was the one year old tree peony seedling, that is really looking quite adult these days.
But it was sunny.
We went for our morning walk, as the wind had not really gotten organized yet.





Alium emerging









Wednesday morning
This was maybe going to be the coldest morning, with its potential to do the most damage.
At 4:45, which was when I got up after a decent 6+ hours of sleep, it was only 30 degrees. But there was snow. It had not been expected. At least by me. Everything is covered by about 1-2 inches of snow. Great.
Now I really feel positive.

Doesn't a black and white photograph stand out sometimes.


But there would be excitement, even with all that snow.
I looked out the window at 6:15.
The snow was finished and in fact the sky had cleared.
And in the big old elm tree.....there was a duck.
What?
Right up there on a branch, pretty high up.
It was  clearly a duck.
Because of the angles from the different upstairs windows and the branches in the way, sometimes I could see one duck, sometimes none, and from one window I could see that there were two ducks.



Here are the two ducks. (With wildlife sometimes the pictures are not the best.) ( My neighbor Bob did get a picture these last few days of the neighborhood fox.)




One was still there an hour later when we were off on our walk.
That was the last we saw of them.





Thursday
It was the coldest morning of the week. Officially we got down to 21. It was again  28 on our front porch. However it was not windy, and there was no snow.
On our walk we did discover another fairy display. There have been several this month.




I had decided to bring some hellebores inside, to see how they would do as cut flowers. Well, in a vase they did not work, all bent over. But then I remembered the proper way to display hellebores, inside.














Friday
What is there to say about snow in the middle of April. Who remembers the blizzard of 1973? We lived on the farm then.

https://www.tswails.com/single-post/2016/04/08/THE-GREAT-APRIL-BLIZZARD-OF-73

But this was the two inches on April 17, 2020, during the pandemic. Not quite as memorable.
It was not even unique to the week.
We also had seen this one coming.

I loved the snow pattern on this banner.































Saturday
The weather warmed up. That had been expected.  It was not, however, the day I had thought it would be. I had anticipated a day in the garden, with lots of accomplishments.
There was the almost three hour Zoom legal education program on the virus in jails and prisons. ( As a lawyer I represent many people who are incarcerated.) That program took a chuck out of the day. It was very timely though, as the Iowa Department of Corrections announced its first inmate with the virus.
I did plant a few things in the garden that had started arriving. I have some new Siberian Iris that should be wonderful maybe in another year or two. I have to be careful planting anything this early. I have to make sure that where I think there is room to plant something is not the place where something still has to come up.




The pond is showing signs of life. I will have to think about fish and tadpoles soon.

















In the spring blooming sequence it is time for anemones. These are anemones, the windflower. I right off hand I do not know why the are called that.





































This orchid was a complete surprise. It was hiding in a clump of plants in the basement. We noticed the fragrance before we saw the flower. Sometimes indoor plants get ignored this time of year.

Julia's recipe

Bread

Everyone seems to be baking bread these days - both the Coop and HyVee are out of commercial packages of yeast, but HyVee is selling 2 oz. packets in little sandwich bags, presumably from their in-store bakery, which is a neighborly gesture. I have baked bread from time to time for a number of years. The problem with home-baked bread is that it tastes so good that a person eats too much bread. But these are troubled times, and the likelihood of eating too much home-baked bread is not a deterrent to making it. I use plain recipes - sometimes Betty Crocker and sometimes Joy of Cooking. The recipe below is "White Bread Plus" from one of my old Joy of Cooking cookbooks.




Here's what you'll need: 1 tablespoon of yeast; 1/2 cup of white sugar; 1 egg; 1/2 cup melted shortening (I think neutral oil - not olive or coconut - would work fine);
1-1/2 teaspoon salt; 2-1/2 cups water; 8 cups (more or less) of all-purpose flour.














I started by putting 1/2 cup of hot- from-the-tap water in a 2 cup measure along with the yeast and 1/2 teaspoon of the sugar. I mixed them together with a fork and set the cup aside so let the yeast go to work. This took about 10 minutes.

Then I measured and melted the shortening. And let it cool off a bit.











When the yeast was bubbly (see picture above) and the melted shortening no longer real hot, I poured the shortening and the 2 cups of not quite so hot tap water into a big bowl. I mixed in the sugar, salt and egg with a whisk.

Then I whisked in the yeast mixture, using a spatula to get it all.












Next I switched to a wooden spoon and started mixing in flour.
























After about 6-1/2 or 7 cups, mixing got to be hard work.



















So I put the plastic pie-rolling-out mat in the counter, anchoring it (it lives rolled-up in a tube when not in service) at the corners with such things as our Barack Obama bobble-head and a timer in the shape of a chicken.

I sprinkled the mat liberally with flour and started kneading - simultaneously working the dough and adding flour. Whenever the dough started to stick, I sprinkled on some more flour. I think I ended up using the full 8 cups.

To knead, I used both hands (mostly the heels of my hands) to push the dough down and away from me. Then I picked up the blob of dough, turned it 90 degrees, folded it in half toward me and pushed again. Push down and away, pick up, turn and fold, push down and away again. Over and over again, pausing only to add more flour as required.

Eventually, the dough was less sticky and more cohesive. The cookbook buzz words for this state of the dough are "smooth, elastic and satiny." I worked the dough into a round shape and let it sit on the mat while I washed my hands and prepared a big bowl.





Here is the dough in a big bowl. I sprayed the bowl with cooking spray and plopped the dough in, then turned it over so the top was lubed up too. I think I also sprayed the top a bit.

I covered the bowl with a clean tea towel and left it on the counter for probably an hour or maybe a little longer.












Here is the dough after rising in the bowl. Note how much bigger the dough ball is at this stage.

















Back to the mat. I divided the dough ball into rough thirds. I patted each third into a rectangle shape roughly the width of my bread pan. Note that the end toward me is a little narrower than the other end. This is on purpose.















I rolled up the rectangle, starting at the narrower end and pinched the loose end with the part of the loaf closest to that loose end. I am not sure how to write this - just pinch the loose end so that the loaf holds together. Do the same thing on the ends of the loaf.


I lubed up a 9" x 5" loaf pan and plopped the loaf in, seam side down.








After making 2 plain loaves, I made the third loaf cinnamon bread. I keep a shaker of cinnamon sugar for the times when one needs some cinnamon sugar. I think I sprinkled maybe 1- 2 teaspoons over the dough. Then I rolled and pinched and lubed and plopped as above.
















After the loaves were all in pans, I put them on the floor near a heating register and made a little tent with a tea towel. The loaves needed to rise in the pan. The second rising also took about 1 hour, maybe a little less. Check after 45 minutes.














Here are the loaves having risen in the pan and brushed with a little bit of melted butter.

If I had left them under their rising tent longer, they would have risen higher, but I liked the looks of the loaves at this stage.

A word of caution: there is such a thing as over-rising at which point the loaves can begin to fall back upon themselves. This is to be avoided.







The recipe had me put the loaves in a cold oven and then turn the temperature up to 400 degrees. Then after 15 minutes, down to 375 degrees.

The bread baked for about 45 minutes in total. It's done when you thump it and it sounds hollow. For the more scientific among you, I think you can take its temperature with an instant read type thermometer - done when it reads over 200 degrees.






I removed the loaves from the pans right after they came out of the oven, onto a wire rack.
















Here is one of the plain loaves, sliced. The texture is good - no unseemly air pockets. It is sturdy enough to slice neatly. It makes nice toast or a lovely sandwich.

Odds and Ends

Are we there yet?

As I looked back at pictures from 2008 I found this.

It was taken before the Iowa caucus.

We still have the yard sign. 

Maybe we will put it up in November.

Stay safe, and find a flower.
Philip