November 7, 2021- Goodbye outside-Hello inside

The freeze happened. 

There were a couple of mornings this past week where the official temperature got down to 21. I do not think it got to 21 in our yard. For one thing the sycamore and linden trees still have most of their leaves. And frost comes out of the sky. Everyone knows that. 

But we certainly had some kind of hard freeze. The annuals are toast. 

Last weekend's sunshine brought out the best in the late fall garden. These are pictures were from last Sunday, before the frost.

Bright yellow hosta in the spring are quite fashionable. This hosta, nigrescens, was green then. Just as leaves on trees turn colors, so do other plants. The sprinkling of the fading green was particularly attractive in the bright sunshine.

This is cimicifuga. It blooms so late that sometimes the frost stops it before it gets going. 

Some hosta were still looking good, at the end of October. This is Bridal Falls, certainly one of my top ten hostas.

This is Sum and Substance,  in a sheltered area by the back garage.

Those hosta are now toast, along with the annuals. Hosta cleanup begins this weekend. Of course that will be after I plant bulbs, the last of which arrived on Tuesday. 

All the plants came inside. Well most of the plants came inside. 

I put two orchid cactus that had buds in the back garage. They came out Friday. That is because we will now have a week with no frost. I am hoping that there will be at least one last flower. This is  Epiphyllum hookeri. It will just keep making buds until frost. I should add that from my experience, the buds will not survive the trip inside.

Mostly it is an inside garden now.

The plant on the pedestal is a cattleya. It has 5 stalks with a total of 37 buds. It started blooming on Tuesday, November 2.

Here was that first flower.

The inside garden is so different.  It has quite a few challenges.

The first challenge of course was just getting everyone inside.

Then there is placement. Which plants need more light. How do you tell?

Then there is moving plants around.

Finally there is maintenance. (That includes watering.)

When the great migration is completed there are always some plants that will immediately start to drop their leaves. Crotons are interesting that way. Some drop and some do not. I just have to find their rhythm. This really requires a schedule. That is difficult while there is still so much to be done outside.

More pictures

The tillandsia continues to bloom over the sink in the kitchen.

Here is the living room on a sunny day.

This is tillandsia cyanea. We got it several years ago. It bloomed at that point to show what it could do. No blooms  since. This week I discovered there is a bud coming. It was almost one of those exclamation moments.

When will it bloom. I have no idea. I could be a month. 

When I look it up on the internet I learn that it is apparently a bromeliad.

Here are some of the larger orchid cactus, settling in for the winter.

Part of the basement is now clivia central. The room has some new LED lights which may be enough light for the clivia in winter.

The crotons are so colorful in the sunshine.

The one flower on the cattleya had become 5 by yesterday.

The fall crocuses continue, having paid little attention to the freeze.

There really is quite a bit of life left in the outside garden. I will try to discuss that next week.

Julia's recipe

Chicken with Spinach

 I first thought to label this another chicken curry, but that's not accurate really. It is an adaptation of a recipe from Madhur Jaffrey's Quick and Easy Indian Cooking, but it does not include curry powder. So let's just call it Chicken with Spinach and leave it at that.

I made this dish recently in Maine, with already cooked chicken and fresh spinach and shallot. I made it at home with raw chicken and frozen spinach and onion and tomato. Good both ways. And both ways, it took about the same time to prepare: 30 to 45 minutes. 

The ingredients:

1) about 1-1/4 lb. skinless boneless chicken breast;

2) about 1/2 of a big bag of frozen chopped spinach;

3)1/4 cup currants or raisins;

4) 1/2 cup plain yogurt;

5) 1/4 cup vegetable oil;

6) 3 tablespoons Dijon or grainy mustard;

7) about 2" of ginger;

8) 1 chili pepper (or 2);

9) 3 bay leaves;

10) 6 cardamom pods; 11) a 1" piece of stick cinnamon; 12) 5 whole cloves; 13) 1/2 teaspoon of red pepper flakes; 14) 1/3 cup onion; 15) 1/2 cup tomato (if you have one handy) and 16) some salt and pepper to taste. 

I realize this is a longer than usual list of ingredients. Many of them are spices cooked in the skillet in a tea ball or other vegetables that are tossed into a food processor and zizzed up. Lots of ingredients; not a commensurate amount of prepping. 

 

First I cut the chicken into chunks by cutting each breast into 3 long strips and then cutting across into somewhat the same size pieces. 

Next, I put the cardamom pods, cloves and stick cinnamon in a tea ball. These spices were to cook in the dish whole, and I did not want to worry about encountering a whole clove (for example) in my dinner. 

Putting the spices in the tea ball allowed me to fish it (and them) out before serving. 

Next, I heated the oil in a big skillet and added the bay leaves, the red pepper flakes and the spice ball and then the chicken pieces.  I think this is a video of the chicken hitting the pan. 

After the chicken had calmed down, I cut up the tomato, cleaned and cut the onion, peeled and cut up the ginger and seeded the hot pepper. Then I put the food processor together and dumped in the onion, tomato, hot pepper, ginger and some of the spinach.

This chopping and zizzing took maybe 10 or 15 minutes, during which time, I occasionally stirred the chicken and let it cook over medium-low heat. 

I believe this is a video of zizzing. 

After the food processor work was done, I let it sit for a minute.

I added the currants and the yogurt to the skillet and stirred them in, then added the contents of the food processor. And some salt and some pepper. I stirred some more and then added the rest of the frozen spinach.

I let it cook, covered, for maybe another 10 minutes so that the spinach was cooked and everything was hot. 

Last, I took out the tea ball and stirred in the mustard. 

Here it is in a bowl. Although it is not strictly speaking a curry (meaning no curry powder or turmeric), we served it with rice and peach chutney and currants and coconut for individual garnishing. 

We were on the alert for the bay leaves and were able to remove them without incident.

The dish was good, reheated well for lunch later in the week and made the house smell nice. 

Odds and Ends

I cannot wait for daylight savings time to end. That wait is over.

Yesterday was the last day of dark when we get up in the morning. (At least for a month.) Sunrise yesterday in Iowa City was at 7:44 a.m.  I know the days will shorten for another 6 weeks or so. But even on the solstice I do not think is any darker in the morning.

Of course there is the matter of waking up this morning  and not knowing what time it is. I have not worn a watch for months. It irritated my skin. I also discovered a watch was not really all that necessary. For one thing there are time devices all around us- in the car, at our desks, in the kitchen.

We will spend the next few days figuring out which devices changed automatically.

But then there is the internal biological clock. I wake up around 5, whether it is light out or dark. Sure enough I woke up this morning and found a reliable time device. It was only 4 am.

I did bring the eggplant plant inside. It is under the brightest light in the basement. We will see how that goes.

There are plants at the office these days.

This little cactus is at the office. It starts to bloom as soon as it comes inside.

If you get up at 4 there is much time available. That includes time to edit today's post.

Here is one group of buds on the cattleya.

That is it for this week. 

Be safe and adjust your internal and external clocks.

Philip