October 3, 2021 - It is transition time

The garden is very much like life.

There is the past, the present, and the future.

Each is important. 

It is all about finding the balance between the three.

It is also about moving from one to the other. 

That would be transition time.

The past is like  pieces of a puzzle.

That puzzle is who we are, here in the present.

The present is sort of elastic. It can be a brief moment, like just here in the dark on a Tuesday morning, before any hint of sunrise.

Or it can be this week, long before any frost is forecast.

Then there is the future. Oh my. What a topic. Is the future just what happens later at work today?

Or is the future the winter?

Or the spring?

Enough of that.

As I sit in the dark early in thew week I think about my garden to-do list.

That list requires jumping around between the past and the future.

What plants are new and therefore need labels?

What bulbs need to be purchased for planting this fall?

Planting bulbs is all about doing something in the present for future enjoyment.

Just imagine for the moment what commitment you have to have to plant a tree? Or tree peony seeds.

I begin to think about bringing plants inside. 

This is called the great plant migration. 

Plants will come inside both to the house and to the office.

I try to do a little inventory to allow me to see the number and type of plants that have to move.

Update Saturday afternoon:

I ordered those bulbs that had not been ordered. Monsella tulips were on that list. I have more tulips coming in the next month than usual. 

Still coming are more martagon lilies. 

And Oriental poppies.

And some more things I am forgetting.

Remember Monsella tulips?

They really only last one year. Some will come back but the group effort will not be there.

So I actually threw the old bulbs away when they were done. Sometimes gardening is brutal.

So 20 new ones are coming soon, to grace the parkway again in Spring.

Planning now for the future.

But for the moment I am planting for the future with little bearded iris.

First of all here were some of the stars from early May.

How can you not get them all on the "more" list.

I was so inspired by those plants in May that I ordered about 16 new plants from Aitkins, in Portland, Oregon. That is where I have gotten most of my little iris.

I was just finishing planting those a week ago when a friend from Lisbon started sending me many of her little ones. She was  apparently thinning hers.  Iris do tend not to be divided in years. And then you must divide and figure out what to do with so many.

 So I got about a dozen new varieties. There were  3-4 of some varieties, and lots more of others.

Here were some of those I received.  Or do I say here are some? Certainly these are some of what will be blooming in the spring. There is that old time thing bouncing around.

This is blueberry tart. I think I planted a special snowdrop called blueberry tart. I sometimes think about planting plants with the same name all in one spot. Remember Shirley? There are tulips and there are poppies.

I was running out of room to plant 50-100 new little iris.

So I began to redo the bed along Fairview which had some iris. It was rather overgrown, not really having been worked on in a while. Did I mention it still has not rained? The ground was rather hard. I call this resetting a bed. You have a whole lot to do before any plants go in the ground.

I  use the shovel or the spade to turn over a clump. When it is so dry I have to hit the clump with the flat side of the shovel, trying to break up the clumps. After all the salvageable plants are removed I  work the dirt adding compost and a little horse manure. Finally I  rake the little bed, getting out all the little roots of plants that had been removed. At some point  the reward and easy part is planting the iris.

Here is how far I got yesterday.

Elsewhere in the garden the fall bloom continued.

Having repeated this several times recently, let me say again this is Epiphyllum hookeri.  It will set buds all the way to frost. I have seen some that yesterday were visible but no more than1/2 inch. Maybe they will bloom if we have a late frost.

This next picture is Epiphyllum oxypetulum.  5 of the 7 buds are continuing to mature. The one that ha turned red had something happen so it did not mature. The buds are now about 8 inches long. You can tell when they are about 2 days from blooming when they begin to curve up.  That hasn't happened yet.

Last Sunday the cactus bloomed.

I think today there will be more flowers. There were 5 buds yesterday looking like they were ready.

The toad lilies are now all blooming.

This last toad lily is yellow. I have had the plant for ten years. It seems healthy but never gets any bigger. It is growing right under the walnut tree. Some say walnut trees are a little toxic.

Maybe I will move it and see if it does better. Something else for the to do list.

Julia's recipe

Chicken and chips - chilaquiles in tomatillo sauce 

I watched an episode of Simply Ming in which Rick Bayless was the guest chef, and he made chilaquiles. I have come to learn that the term "chilaquiles" covers a whole spectrum of dishes, always including tortilla chips or strips and always including a sauce of some kind, but otherwise anything goes. Meat, no meat; eggs, no eggs; cheese, no cheese; red sauce, green sauce; lots of toppings or not. Here is my inauthentic version.  

The ingredients:

1 8 oz. bag of tortilla chips;

5 or 6 tomatillos;

1/2 of a medium onion;

2 jalapenos;

4 garlic cloves;

2 cups cooked chicken;

1 or 2 tablespoons oil;

1/2 teaspoon salt; and

2 cups chicken stock - homemade or made with better than bouillon.

To garnish:

sour cream, sliced avocado, chopped fresh tomato (not shown because they were a last minute addition).

First, I turned the oven on to 450 degrees. 

I cleaned the tomatillos (why are they sticky under the paper husk?) and the peppers (I did not scrape out the seeds, but you could) and the onion. 

I cut the tomatillos and the jalapenos in half. I sliced the onion into thickish slices. I did nothing to the garlic. 

I put all the veggies on a parchment-lined rimmed baking sheet, and I brushed the vegetables with a little oil. Then I put the baking sheet in the oven on the upper rack.

After about 5 minutes, I shook the pan and turned on the broiler. I don't like broilers. Not sure why. But sometimes one must do what one must do. 

I let the veggies broil for about 5 minutes. 

At the end of that time, the parchment looked like it had been through a rough experience and the vegetables were soft and a little bit brown, especially on the bottom. 

You could let them broil longer and get browner. 

Next, I assembled the food processor and plopped everything in, slipping the skins off the garlic cloves. I added the 1/2 teaspoon of salt.

Here are the goods. It did not take long to process the ingredients to a smooth liquid-y brew. 

I poured the mixture into a large skillet and added the chicken broth. 

I cooked the mixture for a few minutes on medium heat. The idea is to bring it to a simmer and let it simmer for 5 minutes or so. 

While the sauce was heating up, I shredded the chicken. 

After the sauce had simmered for five minutes, I added the chips and stirred/mashed them until they were all covered with sauce and began to soften. 

Then I added the shredded chicken and stirred some more, just to heat up the chicken.

While that was going on, I prepped the avocado and diced it into small pieces, diced a medium sized tomato and put some sour cream in a serving bowl. 

On the table in the skillet.

In the bowl with garnishes. It's a pretty dish. We served it with corn from our freezer (farmer's market corn), salad and cantaloupe. 

Leftovers were good warm or cold. 

Odds and Ends

A word from Julia about apples.

One of our favorite vendors at the Farmer's Market is Buffalo Ridge Orchard, located near Central City, north and east of Cedar Rapids. They sell beautiful lettuce in the spring, little potatoes, beets, tomatoes, kale later on.

And apples of all kinds. I buy Lodi in the early summer for pies and applesauce. Then we browse among the varieties for old favorites and new favorites. Today I was taken with Wolf River. I made apple crisp with the apple on the right - it yielded 8 cups of pared and cored and sliced apple bits, crisp and tart-ish. One apple. The little item in the foreground is an egg. An extra large egg at that. Apples from the Farmer's Market, wherever you are, will be much fresher than the ones that travel from Michigan or Washington. And the varieties! Silken and Orleans Antique and Song of September and Zestar. And Wolf River. Find some local apples if you can.

The day is shrinking away. Remember the days when the garden day could start at 5? Today the sunrise is at 7:05. Maybe if I position the sprinkler where I want it to be I can start it in the dark.

The precipitation chance has disappeared this weekend. 

I will load some plants in a box to take to the office this morning. 

Not as many cactus this year. But many more hoyas. 

Be safe. Plan ahead. 

Remember Monsella tulips and little iris. 

Philip