September 4, 2022- Pushing onward and talking Sansevieria

 

Last weekend's enthusiasm is in the past. A week of dry warm weather, with no real rain in sight, has taken me back into the garden doldrums. What a great word. I wonder where the word comes from.

Part of that condition comes from the shortening time to just be in the garden. Sunrise is now at 6:35. On cloudy days it is difficult to do much before 6:30 other than to turn on the sprinkler.

Actually I did a little work on the garden yesterday, the start of the three day weekend. I potted jade plant cuttings. I now have about 70 little ones, that will fatten up over the winter. People like to buy jade plants. There are only about about 8-9 jade plants left that were cuttings last winter. I looked it up and there were 30 little ones that I brought inside last October. 

Road trip- One piece of news this last week was another road trip. This time I had a court case in Manchester, Iowa which is about 66 miles due north of Iowa City. Nearby is that wonderful country nursery called In the Country Garden. Josh Spence has a remarkable place there, specializing in hosta, but he has so much more. There are lots of succulents and other house plants. I got 2 mini hostas, a hoya, a cactus and an adenium.

Here is that adenium, which is a nice little plant called a desert rose.

It makes that wonderful trunk that is large at the base, looking like something that is clearly not from around here.

I have another adenium in the garden that looks healthy, even if it did not bloom this year.

I may have to start a collection. I think they stay somewhat small.

Sansevieria

Two of my current serial enthusiasms are sansevierias and hoyas. If you think about it those are all pretty much house plants. They are outside now and they really enjoy it. In Iowa they have to come inside. This week I want to write about sansevierias. 

They go by many names, including snake plant and mother-in-law tongue. I suppose those name comes from the fact that many varieties of the  plant are long and pointed. 

Its botanical name recently was moved into the genus dracaena. This had to do with some DNA thing. Mostly people ignore the change.

It is an ideal houseplant. This is because it can live without much light. Any window will do. No window, no problem. In our house the biggest and oldest plant lives in a corner of the dining room where it only gets indirect light. (The room is a sunny one with nice south facing windows.

Sansevieria has been identified as an air purifying plant. The original study came from NASA who studied how plants would do in space. Sansevieria, along with some other houseplants, had some capacity to take certain pollutants out of the air.

I read something yesterday that this plant will clean your air, take out the pollen, cure your headaches, and even improve your profit margin. Well....I hope people understand that may be a little exaggerated.

Let me just say it is a low light houseplant that is fine being neglected. It even has some health benefits.

Here is the wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sansevieria

This picture is the one plant we have had the longest. It is S. trifasciata. That is a name that I will remember for 2 minutes. We have had the plant for probably 20 years. We got it from a friend who was moving to the east coast, and there was not room for moving big plants. It was old then. It is probably the most recognized plant of the group. 

The plant is very root bound. It is so tall that I do not want to repot or divide it. It would be soooo tippy. That is the difficulty with any plant that is tall. You would want to put stakes on either side. But even stakes have a hard time supporting a plant if the soil is not packed. Sometimes with a larger jade plant I  use bricks on all sides.

I have found that I can take cuttings from the plant. 

The second sansevieria we got was a cylindrical one. Sometimes the variety is called "starfish", for obvious reasons.  This picture is from 2019.

Here is that same plant this last December, at the office.

Yes, it blooms. It also makes more plants.

This picture was from November 30, 2021. Since it had not bloomed before we did not know what to expect.

It was in full bloom on January 3, 2022.

It sent out runners, making new plants. I was able to get two decent sized plants this last month, which went on the sale table this week. They sold within a few days.

The original plant from 20 years ago, discussed earlier,  also blooms almost every year. The scale of course is quite different. The picture is from July 22, 2022.

Here is a closeup of those flowers.

There are some that are rather short, sometimes called a bird's nest. This variety is  called Stars and Stripes. The striping is rather wonderful.

This one combines many traits of all the others. It is also a little curvy.

You can see the side shoot. These type seem to replicate every year. 

The rest of the garden

If you wander around in the garden you will find something happening.

Here the little tillandsia is getting ready to bloom. It turns all red right before it sends out that tiny flower.

Here was the first fall crocus. It bloomed yesterday. (I sometimes wonder why I do not weed a little before I take the picture.)

More crocuses are coming up. These are some colchicums back by the back driveway.

In any place where fall crocuses have been planted you do have to be care weeding. Fortunately I have many other places to weed.

The Jack in the pulpit seed head is almost all red.

Julia's recipe

Zucchini Scampi

I did not eat zucchini as a child. We had winter squash, but not summer squash. When Philip and I lived on the farm in our youth (with other people - our hippie graduate school years), we grew a lot of vegetables, and that's when I met zucchini and the rest of the summer squash family - crookneck, pattypan, yellow zucchini. The more earnest and vegetarian among us made zucchini-walnut loaf. It tasted much as you would expect. We played destructive wiffle ball with the zucchini that grew to the size of baseball bats (as they do if you don't pay attention). I have come along since the days of zucchini wiffle ball. I now make both main course dishes (zucchini-baked eggs, ratatouille) and baked goods (chocolate zucchini cake, zucchini bread) with summer squash. This dish, from the NYT, is a side dish, quick and flavorful.

The ingredients:

1 medium (say 8 " long) zucchini;

1 tablespoon vegetable oil;

1 clove garlic, smushed (maybe 1/2 teaspoon);

1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes;

1/4 cup white wine;

1-1/2 tablespoons butter (cold!);

1-1/2 teaspoon lemon juice;

some chopped parsley;

some salt. 

I started by washing and trimming the ends from the zucchini. Then I sliced it into 1/2" pieces. That coiled thing is a tape measure.

I laid the zucchini rounds out on the cutting board and the slices with kosher salt. I used about 1/2 teaspoon.

I let the zucchini sit for maybe 20 minutes (the recipe said at least 10, no more than 30), and turned my attention to the rest of dinner. 

At the end of the waiting period, I blotted the zucchini slices with paper towels. 

Then I heated the tablespoon of oil in a big no-stick skillet. When the oil was shimmery, I put the zucchini slices (salt side down) in the skillet and let them cook for maybe 2 minutes. Of course, they did not cook evenly. This is one of the disadvantages of a big skillet on a glass-top stove. 

When I came across a slice of zucchini that was nicely browned, I put it on the serving plate and moved the other slices around until they were all done. 

I put the garlic and the red pepper flakes in the same skillet that I had just taken the zucchini out of. 

Note: the recipe said to sprinkle the raw garlic and red pepper flakes over the cooked zucchini slices, but I thugh that might be too sharp.  So I cooked them both. 

Next I added the little bit of wine and cooked it for a couple of minutes. And then I added the butter, and stirred. 

The idea is to make a sauce. Last I added the lemon juice and stirred it in.

I poured the sauce over the zucchini.

Another picture of pouring. 

And here it is. We had spaghetti and meat sauce and it made for a vaguely Italian meal. Of course, we followed this with salad and watermelon and lemon/lime bars, so overall it was something of a mash-up.

The zucchini slices had some substance - not flabby. The sauce was piquant. A nice side dish.

Odds and ends

I really do not want to dwell on the fact it is dry. One must remember there are always places with harder times. Here is the drought map, curtesy of the local TV channel. I do think that Ottumwa just got some rain.

This adds to the picture.

Friday morning when I write this part of the post, I watched on the radar as another bit of rain slid north of us.

Last night it was the Quad cities that seemed to get the rain.

Yesterday I got some new magic hose that is suppose to curl up in tiny spaces. I will get to try it out this week.

The night blooming cereus, in fact 3 different plants, should bloom later this week.

In this picture you can see the bud starting to curve upwards. By the time it blooms it will be straight out, rather than looking downwards. This suggests to be that it may bloom in 2-3 days. Or maybe I should say 2-3 nights.

It is time to close and send these collected thoughts out into the cluttered internet. I hope you enjoy them. I always like to hear back from you. Do you have any sanseveria?

There was a point yesterday where I was feeling a little stuck inside. I just did not want to go out into the garden because of the weeds and the temperature and the lack of rain. But I forced myself to go do one thing. Once I was outside there was a breeze. I stayed out for some time. I got some good work done.

This seemed like an important lesson. 

September is here. Elections are around the corner. Parts of the world remain in crisis. This week we must remember Pakistan. COVID is still here, making every cold suspect. It might be a time to pull the covers over our collective heads and remain stuck inside. 

So go do one thing. That might help. It might help the world. It will certainly help the person who does that one thing.

Philip