December 11, 2022- Week #3

 

Particularly when it is overcast, as it was the last few days this week, it seems so dark, for so long. The solstice is coming. Then the light will grow.

It continues to be mild, for December, with temperatures stuck between 25 and 40. It has actually stayed above freezing for several days at this point.  I was even able yesterday (Saturday) to do a little yard work. What was there to do at this point? I raked some leaves. They just magically appear even after I have raked there. While I was outside I did look for early snowdrops that might be waking up.

But let me talk about the picture contest and warmer times.

In last week's voting the winner, in something of a surprise, at least to me, was the daffodil.

Here was the full voting.

The daffodil moves on to the knockout round.

Week #3

#1 Anemone Blanda April 23, 2022

I just love the colors and the composition of this picture. All that brown with the wonderful white ray flowers. Then there is just that touch of blue. This is Anemone blanda, the white varieties.

Anemone is the genus. Blanda is the species.

Sometimes there are anemone blandas that are purple. Even pink. Who knew? This is the white one, which just feels more correct. You know what I mean? Blanda. White. 

A. blandas are a regular in the spring presentation, coming early but not real early.

I find the white ones grows slower than the other colors. They are slower to form a clump. 

#2 Bluebells April 24, 2022

I so enjoy writing and thinking about bluebells. There are very few plants/flowers that dominate the garden at any one time. Bluebells are one such plant. They dominate for about two weeks around the end of April.

The formal name is Mertensia virginica. They are native to eastern north America. I  remember seeing some bluebell relative in Colorado, along snow fed streams.

They grow from a tuber, that looks a little like a carrot. With all those flowers making seeds, you see little ones all over. I always will have a few that come up in the woodchip paths.

There are so many of them in the garden that I usually pot up about 50-75 each year. If you dig them up when they are just emerging they will easily take the transition to pots. As they grow from a tuberlike root they will transplant easily.

They die back after a few weeks. The old foliage can be pulled out within a few weeks. The same is true for the scilla that is everywhere. Daffodils- not so much.

#3 Itoh peony 'Bartzella' June 5, 2022

This is Bartzella, an Itoh peony. It joined the garden in the spring of 2020, right when the pandemic had started. I had read about it and it seemed wonderful. It took two years to get organized enough to bloom. It performed to expectations in 2022. It should only get better and bigger with time.

Toichi Itoh was a Japanese plant person who accomplished, over decades, what was thought to be impossible. He created a cross between the traditional tree peony and the herbacious peony. The herbacious peony is the one we know that dies back to the ground every year.

What he created was a perennial plant that has the strength of the tree peony but that dies back to the ground. Dr. Itoh lived long enough to create the cross. However he died before he could see a bloom. But his plants carry his name. We honor him by growing his plants.

Here is a little more about this not forgotten plant person.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2022/mar/27/james-wong-on-gardens-miraculous-itoh-peonies-are-a-joy-to-behold

#4 Pink daylily- San Ignacio July 10, 2022

San Ignacio is just as grand as it was when I first took its picture almost 15 years ago. That was the time when daylilies ruled in the garden. That was the time of my obsession with daylilies which lasted for alost a decade. I mapped them. I labeled them. I counted how many scapes they had each year. I got about 10-20 new ones each year.

Then I ran out of room. Something had to give. I moved on.

I still have a container of old daylily labels. I have a folder on the computer with pictures and names. When a nice one blooms without a label I can sometime go to those sources.

There were always a few where I would remember the names, without the labels.

#5 Hoya carnosa September 10, 2022

This is the flower from one of my growing number of hoyas. I have become fascinated by hoyas. My collection is up to about 15 varieties. Julia describes me as a serial enthusiast. My current enthusiasms include hoyas, sansevierias, snowdrops and martagon lilies. I probably have forgotten someone.

Hoya plants differ in several ways. As it takes a while for them to bloom, mostly I notice the difference in size and shape of the leaves. I suppose they differ as to whether they are big or little.

Some leaves are long. Some are round. One is heart shaped. Some that are popular are variagated. There is one cultivar called Crimsen Princess that is quite attractive. A relative is Crimsen Queen.

Then there are the flowers.

They bloom repeatedly throughout the season. They will bloom inside. My mother kept two big plants over her kitchen sink forever. I now have those plants.

The flowers come in colors other than the one in the featured picture. Some are red. Some are almost black. I am growing some of those plants, which have yet to flower. You always need something to look forward to.

Many hoya plants are from the species Hoya carnosa. This flower is from one of several carnosas I have.

One is Hoya carnosa compacta which is the Hindu rope plant. The flower clusters look very much alike. The foliage is all crinklely. 

Hoyas provide an opportunity to learn new words. The flowers grow in an "umbrel". It means there are short flowers that spread from a common point. The work comes from the word umbrella.

The flower clusters develop on a part of the plant called a "peduncle." That is a part of the plant, attached to the stem, where a flower will grow. It appears on a stem. Flowers grow from the same peduncle. You will not have a flower until you first have a peduncle. At the same time the wait can take forever once you grow one.

There you have this week's pictures. I hope you enjoy them. Your comments and return emails are always appreciated.

Bonus Section

Anemone blandas are also known as windflowers. 

I almost picked this picture for the contest.

In the springtime the garden gets really busy. With the spring bulbs growing everywhere, in any square foot there is just so much activity. In this picture there is the little windflower, some scilla (or squill), a frittilaria meleagris, some aconite foliage, and some shoots of a korean merrybell. If you look to the left of the fritillaria flower you will see some thin green shoots with nobs on the end. Those are scillas with last year's seeds riding high. They grow each year by the thousands. 

In most places in the garden you are never far from a bluebell.

Here is Maisie. She visited us at the time the anemone picture was taken. I think she enjoyed the garden.

More about Itoh peony

This next picture was taken on May 7, 2022. You can see Bartzella just starting to grow. By that date the tree peonies were already blooming.

It is rather crowded in that bed. There are lots of lupines along with that marvelous ground cover which is cypress spurge. That would be Euphorbia cyparissias.

You can see the lupine right in front of the Itoh plant.

Here is the picture from June 4, 2022, with the lupine right in front of Bartzella.

More hoya

These next two pictures are from the computer room.

This is a peduncle. Until you have peduncles you will not have flowers. Of course even when you grow a little one, flowers can be a long way off.

Bluebells

Right Now

I would be able to write more about the present if there was only more time. I will just give you this teaser of a picture from this week. More next week. Any guesses of what this is?

Julia's recipe

A new chocolate pudding

This recipe for chocolate pudding is from the Milk Street cooking magazine. It's quite chocolate-y, but a bit more complex in flavor. Not much more work that making the boxed kind (which I do not scoff at), and as I said, chocolate-y and complex and you get to use miso, which does not usually end up in dessert, at least in my experience. 

The ingredients:

3 egg yolks;

3 tablespoons cornstarch;

3 tablespoons cocoa powder;

2 cups whole milk;

1/2 cup boiling water;

4 teaspoons white miso;

1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips;

6 tablespoons salted butter;

1 cup (packed) dark brown sugar (or light brown).

Use whatever kind of cocoa powder (Dutch or natural) you have. Use real semi-sweet or bittersweet chocolate chips (regular grocery store chocolate chips can be foolers as to whether they are real chocolate) or chop your own chocolate from a block of semi-sweet or bitter-sweet to make 1/2 cup). Also, I had white miso but if you have red miso, it will be just fine. There is no risk of muddying the dish with darker miso - it's chocolate! And the flavor of miso is not pronounced, just a bit mysterious in a good way.

 

First I separated the eggs. I saved the egg whites which can be mixed into whole eggs if you are making scrambled eggs in the week after making this pudding. Or the egg whites can be frozen and when you have enough, you can make an angel food cake or a  meringue. I have always struggled with angel food cake, which keeps me humble, like trying to read about economics. I do, however, make a tasty meringue. 

But I digress.

More egg separating. I added the cornstarch and the cocoa powder to the egg yolks. 

Egg yolks and cocoa powder and cornstarch.

Next I whisked these ingredients, added 1/4 cup of the milk and whisked some more. Once the mixture was smooth, I whisked in the rest of the milk. Then I set this bowl aside. 

Although it is hard to see, in this picture, I am adding 4 teaspoons of white miso to the 1/2 cup of boiling water in another little bowl. I whisked until the miso dissolved, which did not take very long at all.

And next, I melted the butter in a saucepan and added the brown sugar. 

This is a video of the butter and brown sugar cooking away over medium heat, getting thicker and beginning to smell a bit butterscotchy. This took about 7 minutes, and it did require some watching and occasional stirring. 

Then I took the pan off the heat and added the miso mixture, and the whole thing bubbled up in a vigorous and somewhat gratifying way. I stirred it until it calmed down. 

I put the pan back on the stove, whisked the egg-cornstarch-cocoa-milk briefly and then poured it into the pan. I brought the contents of the pan to a simmer and when simmering was achieved, cooked it for another 30 seconds. That's all. 

The recipe said to put the chocolate chips in a bowl and then pour the contents of the pan through a sieve to melt the chocolate. I did that for one ladleful of the mixture. Then I decided this was dumb and unnecessary. So I poured all of the hot stuff into the chocolate and whisked. 

Maybe the recipe writers were worried about tiny lumps or some other textural infelicity. Seemed unnecessarily fussy to me. We found no lumps; the texture was smooth. 

And here it is - 6 nice ramekins of chocolate goodness. The ramekins needed to spend a little time in the refrigerator (at least 30 minutes - or more) to cool off. We topped the pudding with whipped cream, because everything tastes even better with whipped cream. 

Odds and Ends

Peonies have been around for a very long time. That is particularly true for tree peonies.

I read a short article on the internet discussing the differences between the types of peonies. It then discussed the debate in China about whether the tree peony or the plum blossom should be the national flower. It is not clear that this was ever resolved.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paeonia_%C3%97_suffruticosa

The tree peony was appointed as the national flower in 1906. With the fall of the empire the plum blossom was selected in 1929. That hardly seemed appropriate when the new government took over. 

Reading about this debate could continue. This 2019 article says the issue is unresolved.

https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1004596/flower-power-understanding-chinas-national-flower-debate

At least in the afternoon we seem to be at the darkest, right now. In Iowa City that is now 4:35. It actually will be a minute later in the day (4:36) tomorrow. The minor shortening of the days for the next 10 days will all be in the morning.

That is about it from dreary Iowa City.

Be kind. Pray for peace. Think about the many people who will not have a hot shower today. 

Philip