Week 13- February 20, 2022

Well, here we are at Week #13. February is over half over. And it is a short month. Surely we will see signs of spring soon. 

Well...

February is also the yo-yo month. The temperatures go up and then they go down. One day this past week it was 59 degrees. The next day the high was 23. 

Today and tomorrow  it will be back up close to 50. But later in the week it will stay below freezing, even during the day.

The snow is melting, not that we ever had that much. But the ground is still frozen. I see no signs of snowdrops or aconite.

So let us look at pictures and think about what has been and will be again.

Last Week

The runaway winner last week was the pink lantana. It was the first picture this season to get over 50% of the vote. That should get it a top seed in the playoffs which start next week.

The full vote was

This Week- Week #13

#1 Liberty Hosta with Bluebells 

May 1, 2021 

If you had to have only one hosta, I would recommend Liberty. It is a good sized hosta, which means it grows well with the bluebells.

I so look forward to bluebells.

#2 Red Iceland poppy

 May 13, 2021

Iceland poppies are really wonderful. In Week #1 you saw a white one. Here is the red one.

#3 Summer Hymns Daylily

 July 5, 2021

This is Summer Hymns daylily. It has ruffles.

#4 Zinnia Zahara 

September 11, 2021

Zinnias are wonderful. This little small variety showed up in stores 10 years ago. They are small, being maybe 6-12 inches tall. They bloom continuously from June to September. I have grown them as a border plant along the street ever since I discovered it.

It is now available in seed form. I grew the plant in the picture from seed.

I will start the seeds around April 1. Or I may just sow them directly outside.

#5 Bougainvillea closeup

 December 29, 2021

This is a closeup of a bract of one of the big bougainvilleas, growing in our bedroom. They are in south facing windows and have bloomed almost all winter.

Bougainvilleas are thorny vines that bloom like crazy so are called ornamental.

They are their own genus, and belong to the family that includes the four o clock plant some of us have grown.

The family name is Nyctaginceae. That will be a term that will have a half life of about 30 seconds in my brain. 

The plant is from South America and stays green all year with adequate moisture. They can take a light frost, but might drop their leaves if that happens. But they are tough.

One of my best plant survival stories was about the plant that gives you this picture. It appears in the Bonus section.

The plants bloom outside from May to November. 

They do need lots of sun. That can be a challenge in my yard. As the pink crabapples are finishing their 50 year run, there is more sun along Fairview Street in the back yard. I have to make the garden adjustment, moving hosta and other plants that preferred semi shade. 

Plant care

https://www.hgtv.com/outdoors/flowers-and-plants/flowers/bougainvillea-care

Bonus Section

If this works here is a slideshow of the outtakes, the pictures that almost made it to the show but came up short. I am testing how many pictures can go into a slideshow and not overwhelm the technology.

There have been quite a few poppies in the contest, including another one this week. Some have been  Iceland poppies and some Shirley poppies.

Here is how you can tell them apart? The centers where the seeds are found look different.

Here are two Shirley poppies:

The center looks like the center of an Oriental poppy. Here is one of those Oriental poppies.

Look at the centers of these two Iceland poppies

Let me enlarge those centers.

The centers of the Iceland poppy are more segmented. They do not make that wonderful jewell box I associate with the Orientals.

I guess you could also say the Shirley poppies are wilder than the Iceland poppies. I think the Iceland poppies are all one color.

Bougainvillea survival story.

For years we have traveled to the east coast in the fall. Depending on when we would go (September or October) I would have to worry about bringing plants inside for the winter. About 5-6 years ago we went in October. I had brought most plants inside, or at least to the garage. The two biggest bougainvilleas were left outside. The night before we returned it got down to close to 20. I really thought I had killed the plants. I brought them inside and waited to see if they would recover. They were toast. All the leaves dropped off and by December there was zero sign of life. I had loaded the first one on to a little cart to take it out to the compost. As I started to wheel it out of the garage I noticed a little bit of green. Sure enough. The plant was alive. I turned the cart around, brought it inside, where it limped through that winter. I pruned it and by the summer it was fully recovered.

The Princess Bride line about being "only mostly dead" certainly comes to mind.

Here is a video of where the bougainvillea live.

Garden Word of the week- bract

A bract is a special leaf like growth, with the flower or flower cluster in the middle. They sometimes are brightly colored to attract...pollinators. The most well known bracts are found on  poinsettias and...bougainvilleas.  

They are not a leaf and they are not a petal.

Here is an entry in Dave's Garden

https://davesgarden.com/guides/articles/view/3156

Another example of a bract is what I would have thought was just a petal. It is those four things with a dogwood flower.

Right Now

Here is a coneflower seedling. They have reasonably decent germination rates.

Here are a couple of baby lupines.

The lettuce thrives.

I will start to harvest some leaves for a salad this week.

Julia's recipe

Almond cookies

The link to the website with all of Julia's recipes is

https://mearskitchen.wordpress.com/

I came across this recipe on the internet, but I can't remember the name of the website. I like these cookies because they are sort of a cross between shortbread and almond cake, recipes for both of which appear somewhere on this blog. They also remind me of kolouria, a kind of Greek cookie made at Easter which my Aunt Julia used to make (and make well). Aunt Julia knew her way around Greek cooking. I do not think we need to wait for Easter, let alone Greek Easter which is almost always later. I could explain why, but let's get to the cookies.  

The ingredients:

1 cup butter (2 sticks) softened by sitting on the kitchen counter for a while;

1 cup powdered sugar;

2 teaspoons vanilla;

2 teaspoons almond extract;

2-1/4 cups white flour;

1 cup almond flour; and

some extra powdered sugar to sprinkle on the cookies after they come out of the oven. 

I preheated the oven to 350 degrees.

I started by creaming the butter, first beating it all by itself and then beating it with the powdered sugar. 

The butter and powdered sugar were a bit reluctant to come together as I wished, so I took a spatula to the mixture until it was more or less smooth. 

I added the vanilla and almond and beat them in. 

Then I started with the 2 kinds of flour. 

The dough was kind of stiff. I used the spatula and then mushed it together with my (clean) hands. 

It never became smooth, but it was workable. 

I used a small disher to portion the dough, and I shaped each dough ball into a little crescent with my hands. 

I have these kind of amazing baking mats. They are thin and re-useable. They can be washed by hand then rolled up and fit into a ring (like a napkin ring) for storage. They are sold under the name "Cookina" and so far I think they are great. I have taken the precaution of only using them for cookies. I will not tempt fate by using them to roast onions and then cookies. 

I put the cookies on the mat; about 15 to a cookie sheet.

In case you are wondering how to go from a disher-sized ball of dough to a crescent, there is a video below. 

video of forming the cookie

I baked the cookies for about 20 minutes, moving the cookie sheet from the top shelf to a lower shelf and turning it around at the 10 minute mark. The cookies will be firm-ish to the touch but not very brown when done.

I let them cool a bit (say 5 minutes) on the cookie sheet and then slid them onto a wire rack.  After maybe 5 minutes on the wire rack, I sprinkled them with powdered sugar, as illustrated below. 

video of sprinkling sugar

When the cookies were kind of cooled off, I moved them to a nice plate. 

And here is a nice plate of cookies. I actually ended up with about twice this number of cookies - about 45 in all. They freeze well; they ship well; they taste good. 

Odds and Ends and what is funny

I grow crotons. I have maybe 8-9 varieties.

They are wonderful house plants in the winter.

One variety has this little pointy thing on the end.

It is a mystery. If it is related to reproduction I do not see how. There is never a flower.

It looks like an elongated vein in this picture.

If find it odd.

I guess it is post time.

Be safe.

Warmer weather will be here soon.

Philip