May 10, 2020 Living in a dangerous world

More so than I want to realize, we are living in a dangerous world.
The garden can be an escape.
The garden can be a way to put up with the fear.
This week it sort of came to the garden.
I will try to minimize this theme as I ramble on a little about the garden.

It actually has been a glorious spring. This week we saw red bud trees and crabapple trees that were fuller than I can ever remember them.
We went by a blooming lilac bush Friday that almost looked like a crabapple, it was so full of purple.

On Wednesday we had a rain that if it came when the corn was up, would have been called a "million dollar" rain. It gently rained all day. There was almost an inch.
After the rain, pulling weeds was just about perfect. I was even able to pull up some of those little trees that from time to time  volunteer all over the place.
When weeding is that easy I find that even if I am tired at the end of the day, I can find the energy to play in the garden, if I can just get myself out of the house.


Last Sunday, like the day before, was sunny and 75 degrees. It was a perfect weekend.
I planted the little pepper plants and my two tomato plants over in our new city garden plot.




But... there was a big problem that lasted all week. Right there in the seven day forecast, there was a freeze warning scheduled for Friday night. It was to get down to 29. It stayed right there in the forecast all week.
Sometimes it would change to 30. But Friday arrived and 29 was still predicted.
It really was rather depressing.
I stopped planting annuals. Last Sunday I actually had just started planting several of the almost two dozen Persian Shield plants that I had grown from cuttings all winter.
I vividly remember going through this entire panic about 3 weeks ago, when a hard freeze was predicted for several nights. It did get down to the lower 20's then and there was some damage to some of the perennials that had come up at the time.

But it was May. Friday was May 8. That is a little late.
I checked the weather data webcite from the University at Ames.
They recorded Friday (for Iowa City) at 26.
The last time it got below 32 was 2011. It was 28 and 30 on consecutive nights on May 4-5.
So what happened?
Well our yard was ok. Bob said he had ice on the bird bath in his yard. I had taken the tender annuals into the back garage. I had covered the lady slippers and the few Persian shields in the ground.
I covered the newly emerging shoots of the calla lilies.
The crotons hunkered down on the front porch.
Everything in the garden was ok.
But...down on the farm, as we call it, it was different. I am talking about the little sunny patch where I had put the peppers and tomato plants. Let's just say the plants did not look so good when I took the pots off them mid morning.
I will go look at them later.
Maybe they will recover.
I will have to get new basil plants.
Who knew about basil.
But there certainly had been at least a frost out there in the open.
I may have to just get replacement plants.




Last week in the voting there was team competition. It was fun. Competition, but not so much one on one.
The winner was Team Tulip.
Here was the winning group.










This week
As for voting I give you a chance to vote for what is your favorite Spring flower. I am not running a contest this week on these particular pictures. I would like you to choose which type of flower, you most like in the Spring.
If you feel motivated I would like you to tell me why you made that choice.
You can either comment at the end of the post, on you can just send me an email with your thoughts.

#1 Snowdrops

#2 Iris

#3 Tulips

#4 Daffodils

#5 Trillium

#6 Winter Aconite

#7 And last, but not least, the crocus

Let me know in the weekly poll what is your favorite spring plant. AND if you have a few extra minutes, tell me why.

Let me show you pictures from this week.

There really is a lot going on this time of year.

I love pictures of patterns.

Here you have a great ground cover epimedium and bluebells.






The white crab in the back yard was so full.





This picture was from the neighborhood. Someone had  a very well weeded bed of vinca, with these very little late daffodils in it.








This is a kind of euphorbia that grows quite well in the Spring.




Here are more little iris pictures.

This little guy is about the most striking of the group.





Look at this picture. It is just a normal little iris.




But look at its friend. The flower has a fourth petal.





I guess the mutation is not all that rare.




The rhododendron is the best it has ever been. We are trying to find its name to get another one.




Here is a different view.





I love it when plants that you like, multiply. These pair of trillium had little ones. I should keep an eye on that space. Trillium will disappear and then you have to be sure not to plant something on top of them.




I believe this is fritillaria acmopetala. We just have the one. It is tall. It is different. Maybe we should get  more.




This primrose is starting to bloom.







This is a view looking towards our house from the east. The Linden (on the left)  and the Elm tree (on the right) have plenty of leaves. The Buckeye and the Walnut are still working on it.




The tree peonies should bloom this week. The bigger pink one has ten buds on it.

Julia's recipe

Glutton Free Chocolate Cookies

https://mearskitchen.wordpress.com/

There are gluten-phobes in my family, and so I have been thinking about gluten-free cooking, and especially gluten-free baking for a while. The trouble with some gluten-free baked-goods recipes is they are complicated and call for unusual ingredients (xanthan gum, white chocolate chips, psyllium powder). I prefer to avoid unusual ingredients, and I prefer uncomplicated recipes. Of course, I also want the baked product to taste good. I have found cookies to be challenging - sometimes cookies made with gluten-free flour have a sandy texture which is not bad, but not ideal. So you can imagine my surprise when I baked up the chocolate cookies for which the recipe follows. The recipe came from a website called deliciouslittlebits. Mainstream ingredients, straightforward method, excellent results. I recommend that you make some. Soon.


The ingredients: 1-1/4 cup soft butter (that's 2-1/2 sticks. A lot of butter. I think that's part of what makes this recipe work); 2 cups white sugar; 2 eggs; 2 teaspoons vanilla; 3/4 cup cocoa powder; 1/2 teaspoon baking powder; 1/2 teaspoon baking soda; 1/4 teaspoon salt; and 2 cups gluten-free flour.

I used some GF flour I got from the Amish country store called Stringtown Grocery. I recommend King Arthur GF. Or Pamela's. I do not recommend any GF flour that includes soy flour, partly because my gluten-phobes are soy-averse too and partly because things baked with soy-including flour have a bit of a beany taste. Really. This is off-putting in baked goods.




I prepared the dough using the standard cookie-making process.  I had left the sticks of butter on the counter to soften so it was easy to cream the butter and sugar (that is, worked with a hand mixer until thoroughly mixed and kind of fluffy). Then I beat in the eggs, followed by the vanilla.












Here is the cookie batter, thoroughly mixed, pending the addition of the dry ingredients.

I turned the oven on to 350 degrees and got out my cookie sheets. No need to lube them up or use parchment.















Next, I added the dry ingredients, in small increments to avoid a dry-
ingredient blizzard.
That's it.












                                                         
I used a small disher (1 tablespoon) to scoop out the dough into more or less uniform blobs. One could use and little spoon and then roll the dough into balls, but the disher works well and is faster.

I ended up with about 5 dozen cookie blobs. I think 63 to be exact. Obviously bigger blobs makes bigger and fewer cookies.







I baked the cookies 2 sheets at a time. I set the timer for 5 minutes. When it went off, I flipped the cookie sheets - top to bottom, bottom to top and also front to back and back to front. Then I set the timer for another 5 minutes for a total baking time of 10 minutes.


When the cookies came out, I set the cookie sheets on trivets so that the cookies could cool for a bit on the cookie sheets. Apparently, they firm up as they cool - so when the timer went off for the second set of cookies in the oven, I flipped those cookie sheets and used a pancake spatula to remove the cooling cookies to a wire rack. This worked just fine - no breakage in transferring from cookie sheet to wire rack. And the cooled off cookies were not at all crumbly - thin and crisp and a bit chewy.






Here they are on the cooling racks. I shipped some to Maine, using plastic berry boxes for the internal containment and then put the berry boxes of cookies into a bigger box, with newspaper for cushioning. The cookies arrived unbroken. Sturdy, shippable, gluten-free, chocolate, delicious. My plan is to take out the cocoa and add a bit more GF flour and oats. I'll let you know how that works out.

Odds and Ends

A friend sent me this piece of one of the wonders of the world.
https://www.boredpanda.com/tulip-garden-keukenhof-photography-albert-dros/?utm_source=upload.democraticunderground&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=organic

Here is another presentation of the same garden.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSEGPaRCFIA&feature=youtu.be

As we think about people and businesses that are hurting in this difficult time we should remember all those botanical gardens that give us all so much joy.
I think about all those spring bulbs blooming now at Longwood Gardens or the Denver Botanical Gardens.
One way we can help is to become a member.
It can be difficult determining how to help.

Here is a great link to one of the Iowa eagle cams.
https://explore.org/livecams/bald-eagles/decorah-eagles




One of the hanging pumpkins still adorns the plant hangers in the front yard. They are hung in the Walnut tree, which gets its leaves very late.












Yesterday was a day to visit one of the garden centers in Iowa City. We went early when they would not be so crowded. They had been closed until a few weeks ago.  I was very impressed at how careful they were being. Almost everyone wore masks. They were wiping down the carts. There was appropriate spacing in the checkout lines.
We got another dogwood tree. I like this nursery since they will give you a two year warranty. Since you buy the tree in late Spring, it will have to get through two winters under warranty. Two of the three dogwoods we have obtained from this nursery have survived through the warranty period.
Stay safe.
Philip