Road trip
After being mostly restricted to Iowa City for the last 3 months we took a road trip Friday. We had a three day weekend so we went to Dubuque for part of the day. The drive takes about 90 minutes from Iowa City. It was a little strange driving somewhere.The specific destination was the Dubuque Arboretum. If you have not been there, consider going, perhaps on a cooler day.
Julia and I packed a lunch, wore our masks if there were people in sight, and spoke to no one.
This garden, staffed entirely by volunteers, is a national hosta display garden. There are so many hosta.
They have much more, including these little annual display gardens, designed by particular people for the season.
Back here in Iowa City the garden gets better every day. This hoya is one of the center pieces.
It responded to some under watering in March by exploding with flowers. We counted 18 clusters this week on the plant that must hang down close to 4 feet at this point.
The cluster of flowers is similar to the asclepias (milkweeds) which is what attracts the monarch butterflies. I was able to catch this monarch on the hoya.
Apparently the monarchs drink the nectar from the milkweeds which make their bodies toxic. Birds will then avoid them.
I wonder if it was fooled by the shape of the flowers. Pictures for comparison appear in the bonus section.
Last Week
This Week as there are so many choices you can again vote for two.
#1 Hoya Rope plant
This is hoya carnosa compacta. It is also called the Hindu Rope plant.
I now have something of a hoya obsession.
There are two that are blooming now.
I have another one that is suppose to have red clusters.
This past winter I succeeded in rooting cuttings.
My garden life has been a series of enthusiasms.
There was the daylily time. Then there was the time when I was really enthusiastic about epimedium.
And of course there was hosta time. Actually there have been several of those.
#2 Daylily Ruby Spider
If I was asked which is my favorite daylily I would not hesitate to say Ruby Spider.
I have had it for 20 years. That is back to the days with my infatuation with daylilies. That ended in about 2005 when I ran out of room to put any more.
This picture was taken some time on Wednesday when it rained off and on totalling about an inch.
It was a good rain.
#3 Lilium Kentucky
That same day, Wednesday, Kentucky bloomed for the first day. There are about 5 of these plants.
Some lilium divide and spread. It seems like others just get bigger.
I googled Kentucky lily and got Lily, a town in Kentucky.
Lilium Kentucky got me where I wanted to go.
It is a fragrant Asiatic lily.
Let me just say the smell is subtle.
This contrasts with some of the Orientals that you can smell a block away.
We are not big cut flowers people.
But sometimes a stalk falls over and what else are you to do.
One Kentucky stalk did that and got to come inside.
I can report that it has held up for now 5 days.
#4 Lilium Triumphator
What a glorious color.
This plant is a cross between an Easter lily and an Oriental lily.
I would like it taller. It is less than 3 feet tall.
But for that you can have one called Silk Road. I will show you that next week.
#5 This week's Japanese Iris
There are not many of the Japanese Iris.
But when they bloom that are rather grand.
#6 Night Rider
This particular plant was in the front yard. I liked the flower so much last year that I got more last fall. They are now growing in several parts of the yard. The newer plants are shorter and bloomed later than the older ones.
#7 African Queen Trumpet lily
This flower started blooming last Sunday. I now have an avalanche of 6 foot tall yellow and orange lilies. I must try to find different colors.
#8 Viva la vita-the Asiatic lily
This is another Asiatic lily planted last fall. As an Asiatic lily it blooms somewhat earlier than the Orientals and their hybrids.
#9 Coneflower Lemon Drop
What the breeders have done with coneflowers is amazing. Here is echinacea Lemon Drop. I read about this in a garden magazine in February 2019. It was a great new plant for 2019. But I could not find it for sale anywhere for any price. In 2020 it was much more widely available. It was worth the wait, and seems quite vigorous. I think there is an entire group of these coneflowers who have that puff on top.
#10 Mr. Cas- the Orientpet
I splashed a few of these Orientpets last fall over on the east side of the garden. (That is on the left if you are looking at the back yard from the house.)
In staking this one I got its pollen all over my arm. Warning- it does not wash off easily.
That is it for this week.
Remember- You can Vote for two.
Remember- If you are in Iowa City you can come by and see if live. I recommend early in the morning.
Bonus pictures
This video speaks for itself. Captured on film, not the fox, but the frog. I am told that you can set this in full screen mode for maximum effect.
The 10 new mail order tadpoles did join the local frog about two weeks ago. So there could be a frog jumping competition.
I thought I would give you side by side the two different Hoyas that are blooming at the moment.
The one on the left of course is the Rope hoya I have had for years.
The one on the right is from my mother. I should be able to find its name. I brought back from Missouri the two plants she had hanging for years over the kitchen sink in her house. I had taken a cutting from one of them 4-5 years before. That plant is now a good sized plant at this point, but has not bloomed. They are all enjoying the outside.
Here are 3 different asclepias, all with that similar flower shape and arrangement. The one at the bottom is the traditional milkweed that we found on one of our walks.
Here are other pictures from the Dubuque Arboretum.
This is a bottlebrush buckeye bush.
This is a hosta I saw that I will track down this winter. It is called Paradise Power.
As everyone knows I have so much room to put big hosta at this point.
Dubuque has the trained koi like so many places.
The daylilies have started and have not yet made it into the weekly top ten. That should change.
Daylilies do give you an opportunity to decide whether you like pictures of a single flower or a group shot. In this picture they just sort of lined up.
Julia's Recipe
Zucchini Salad
Ingredients for the salad: 3 medium summer squash - which yield about 4 cups sliced; 6 scallions - which yield about 1 cup when prepped and sliced; 2 cups of little tomatoes; about 1/2 lightly salted roasted peanuts; about 1/3 cup each fresh basil and fresh mint; 1 teaspoon (or maybe a bit more) kosher salt; and 2 tablespoons olive oil.
Ingredients for the dressing: 1/4 cup jalapeno peppers diced finely (no seeds or ribs); 1 tablespoon smushed garlic; 1/2 cup fish sauce (really); 1/4 cup white wine vinegar; 2 tablespoons white sugar and 1/4 cup water.
First I made the dressing by putting everything in a jar and shaking it up vigorously. This makes more dressing than you will need for this batch of salad. That's okay. The dressing will keep in the refrigerator for a long time and once you have it, you can make this salad easily. The dressing is also nice spooned over some plain roasted or grilled fish.
On to the salad. Joshua says to use a mandoline slicer to make ribbons of squash. I don't have one, so the first time I made the salad I used a potato peeler which made perfectly fine ribbons. The resulting salad was lovely but we noticed we had to chase the ribbons around the plate.
So the next time, I used the slicing function of the food processor to make slices rather than ribbons.
I washed the squash and cut the ends off and then fed the squash into the tube. I got nice thin round (or slightly oval) slices. Pretty like squash ribbons and easier to eat.
If you have bigger (and therefore seedier) squash, you probably should go the mandoline/potato peeler route. That way you can make ribbons all around and discard the seedy less appetizing center.
I put the squash pieces in a colander and mixed in 1 teaspoon of kosher salt. I set the colander in a rimmed pan, put a flat piece (a lid from a big big yogurt container) on top of the slices and put a canister (sugar, I think) on top of the flat piece: weighting down the squash pieces so they would lose some of their liquid. I set that aside for about an hour. I think 30 minutes would do it.
While the squash were draining, I cleaned and sliced the scallions, on the bias to be fancy. I put the sliced scallions in a little bowl with some ice cubes and water for about 20 minutes. This is to reduce the sharpness of the onion.
I washed the basil and mint and patted the herbs dry with a dish towel (which ended up getting a work-out, see below).
After the squash had finished its draining period, I dumped it onto the dish towel and blotted off as much moisture as possible.
More blotting. Then I put the squash in a bowl. I drained and blotted the scallions (same towel) and added them. Next I cut the little tomatoes in half and added them. I added the peanuts (which were small - you could chop them if perchance you have big roasted peanuts). I tore the basil leaves into smaller pieces and added them. The mint leaves were small so I just pulled them off the stems and added them. Finally I added 1/4 cup of the dressing and 2 tablespoons of olive oil. I tasted it and thought it was ready. You might decide it needs a bit more salt or a bit more oil.
Here it is ready for the table. The salad is complex in flavor - salty and sweet and herby plus peanuts.
This would be good with baked chicken or roast salmon. With roasted red potatoes or sweet potatoes. The salad should get to be the star of the show in terms of flavor. The salad keeps for a day or two in the refrigerator.
Happy summer.
Odds and Ends
Plant sale:For several weeks I have had a plant sale on the back driveway with all the proceeds to benefit the local food banks.
As of yesterday we have raised over $1000.
I have no intention of stopping.
I have been potting things up each morning at 6.
In the last few days I have potted epimedium, pulmonaria, and hellebores. I realize that the hellebores, like the hosta, just get bigger. By digging some up I am giving breathing room to plants that need it.
I find even if the weather is hot, if I put the repotted plant into good dirt and keep it wet for a few days, it does not really suffer much of a let-down.
Once I started the sale some people have brought their own plants to add to the sale plants.
Hosta inventory:
I am up to the letter N, as I list all hosta ever. Some labels and new stakes have arrived so I will have to start actually putting out the labels with the plants.
Then I will have many labels with no plants. I had thought I might have a label graveyard. Too dark?
At least that might get them out of the house.
Zinnia seed:
They arrived in the mail early in the week. I planted them Wednesday early in the morning. I knew that the rain that was coming that day might be the last rain for a week,
We had a good rain, amounting to almost an inch.
Incredibly.... by Friday morning some of the seeds had sprouted.
I have given them extra water as it has been hot for the last 3 days: 90 degree hot.
But two days for germination is rather amazing.
I should have a good crop of zinnias come September.
Cuttings:
I have started making cuttings from two baskets of impatients, on sale last weekend.
There are 27 little glass jars now above the kitchen sink.
I recall they take about a week to get their first roots.
Let me close with these videos of the garden very early yesterday morning.
The first was at about 5:07, the second was at 5:21.
The light arrived, starting to add color and shape.
I suppose what would be better would be a time lapse video showing the color fading.
Be safe.
Be careful.
Be hopeful.
Better times are coming.
Philip
1 comment:
I had to give a vote to Night Rider, despite its name. A flower can't help what some fool decides to name it.
In the bonus section, those five pink ruffled lilies are wonderful! Pretty maids all in a row. What a color!
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