February 26, 2023- coming soon- Spring

 Welcome to the  picture contest playoffs. 

You have selected 13 winners. Those winners and one wildcard make up the 15 playoff pictures. There was one week when there was a tie for first place. Hence the math.  These are the best pictures and the competition should be fierce.

This picture competition happens at a time when we may have turned the corner on winter in Iowa City. We have been in a cool holding pattern since one real snow of the winter, 10 days ago. It did not get above 40 all week. 

However the snow will be gone in a few days. Sunny and 50 degrees is predicted for today.  There was even a 60 in the ten day forecast. (It is gone now.) The snowdrops that were up, have weathered the cold and the snow. Here was earlier in the week.

The microclimates have appeared in the garden. The snow is gone from the south side of the house. If you look out the front door you still see mostly snow.

This is the south side of the house in that somewhat chilly sunshine that was yesterday. It tried without success to get to 40. There was no wind and no clouds. It was quite pleasant.

I was able to get out and do some yard work. I filled 4 barrells with leaves and sticks. I cut back the old foliage on some hellebores, exposing the new growth. 

The snowdrops are not the only things in the garden that have endured the last few weeks. These pumpkins look actually happy. They have spent the winter together. Hanging small pumpkins together is something I will remember in my limited world of pumpkin art. 

Julia has spent this last week in Maine, visiting Katie and family. Cooking with cinnamon suger was popular. Maybe you will see the recipe at one point.

They have a lot of books in Maine.

The contest

 

Last Week-  was Week #13.

The winner last week was the Pink Lantana. What a lovely group of colors. I sure hope some of the seeds I have planted grow. I would like to have a lot of lantana this year.

Can you believe there are lantana that are blue?

Here was the full vote.

This Week- The playoffs

Things to know

There are 15 pictures. They will compete over 3 weeks in groups of 5.

Then there will be the finals with those 3 winners.

There are three tops seeds based on winning percentages. No two seeded pictures will be in the same group of 5.  Those seeds were:

Purple crocuses from Week 5...49%

Dwarf Iris from Week 11.....48%

Violet from week 7...46%

The pictures ranged from  February 28, 2022 to November 10, 2022.

The month with the most contestants in the finals was April with 5. May and June trailed with 2 each. 

So here is that first group of 5.

Week #1 of the playoffs

#1 Clivia February 28, 2022

This picture was just about one year ago this week. I do not have any clivia flowers yet this winter. Part of that was that I have kept the plants  dormant, not giving them any water for about 3 months.

#2 Purple crocus clump 

April 10, 2022 

This is the overall top seed. It was a runnaway winner in Week 5. We will see how it does with tougher competition.

Some crocuses have shown signs of waking up. They do have to wait for the aconite and snowdrops who will be first in line.

#3 Bluebells 

April 24, 2022

I cannot wait for bluebell time. This picture shows you that wonderful blue, with its earlier pink. I can understand a flower change from white to pink. Some trillium are like that. But pink to blue? Who would have thought it?

#4 Little Iris - Bennett's Star

 May 10, 2022

This is one of two iris to make the playoffs. These little iris are just around the corner. I would like them to start to bloom and then have the weather slow down. 

I have often thought that the ideal month long vacation would be to gradually travel north, continuously being in April. I may have a conference in Minneapolis in late April. Perfect.

#5 Pink Waterlily

 June 12, 2022

I really like this picture. It shows so much more than just the flower. For one thing there is the bud. The leaves with the water on them are such good background. There is shiny and dark and green. Out of that dark comes the wonderful pink.

Right Now

Lettuce- we have enough lettuce to last for the season I believe. It really was ready in only about 45 days. A few other lettuce notes

When I harvest the lettuce I just use scissors to clip off what we are going to put in the salad. The plants are growing back. I guess I am not surprised. I think I can get another crop in about a month.

I can stagger the plants but just delaying putting them in bigger pots. Small pots stunt their growth. I actuall did a little experiment. I took similarly sized plants. I put one in a four inch pot that was about 4 inches deep. I put the other in a pot that was maybe 5 iches in diameter and a few inches deeper. This took up more room. But the bigger potted plant grew bigger leaves.

Cuttings- I was able to pot up some hoyas with nice roots at this point. They had been on the kitchen windowsill for maybe 2-3 months. Here is Hoya carnosa compacta, aka the Hindu rope Plant. I  started this cutting in December. Since you take cuttings from the end of the long stems, sometimes there will be peduncle. Those are the things that are not leaves, from where the flowers will come. Hoyas produce flowers from the same peduncle over and over. This one is going to bloom in the next month or so. I planted it in a little hanging basket yesterday for a friend.

Crotons- They are doing fine. I like them because they will start to droop when they need water. If you are not on a compulsively organized rigid watering schedule, this is good.

Here is this nice croton in our bedroom. It is in a west window. I watered it Friday when it started to droop. It sat right up. It is interesting in that it has maybe 5% of its leaves that become variagated. 

Julia's recipe

Chocolate Chip Cookies

This is Alton Brown's chocolate chip recipe. As we all know, there are thin, crispy chocolate chip cookies, thick, cakey chocolate chip cookies and chewy, crunchy chocolate chip cookies. This recipe is for the chewy, crunchy kind. It turns out that the difference in texture is a function of the kind of fat used and what state the fat is in when you use it. Thin crisp cookies use room temperature, softened butter. Thick cakey cookies use vegetable shortening. Chewy crunchy use cooled melted butter. I do not understand the science. 

I have been a fan of Alton Brown since I first ran across his science-y, sock-puppet-ridden TV cooking show. He has taught to make a bunch of things I didn't know how to make, from cookies to gumbo. That said, I did not follow his method completely, and I hope he doesn't mind.

The ingredients:

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter;

2 egg yolks;

3/4 cup white sugar;

3/4 cup brown sugar;

1 teaspoon vanilla;

2-1/4 cup all-purpose flour;

1 teaspoon baking soda;

1 teaspoon kosher salt; and

a 12 oz. bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips.

I happened to have 2 sticks of unsalted butter. If you have salted butter, only use 1/2 teaspoon of salt.  

First, I melted the butter and let it cool for a few minutes in the pan on a trivet on the counter.

When the butter was no longer really hot, I poured it into a stand mixer and added the sugars (brown and white), the egg yolks and the vanilla. I mixed these ingredients on low to medium until combined. 

I set the oven at 375 degrees. 

Next I added the flour and the soda and the salt. 

AB says to sift the dry ingredients together in your food processor. And I get that. A food processor would aerate the dries and make sure the soda and salt are way mixed in. But I do not use the food processor. I stirred the dries together and then added them in increments. That avoids the flour blizzard senario.

Lastly, I stirred in the chocolate chips with a rubber spatula. I used a small disher to scoop up little lumps of cookie dough which I put on an air-bake cookie sheet, 12 to a cookie sheet. 

I ended up with about 40 lumps. I baked two sheets at a time for 8 minutes, then I flipped the cookie sheets, top to bottom and front to back. In for another 5 minutes or so. They're done when they are golden brown and just set. Times will vary with the size of the cookie and your oven. If you use a bigger scoop, your cookies may take a minute or two longer to bake. 

On the cooling rack. The cookies were chewy on the first day and crunchy thereafter. Both are fine with me. I think if you use a bigger scoop, the chewy phase might last for 2 days. By the way, these are stackable cooling racks, which is genius. They were a gift from my sister Joan. 

Odds and Ends

Pot holes- It seems like it is their season. There are several on the main streets that will give you quite a jolt.

Dirt in the refrigertor? I know Julia was away this week, but....When Maggie was over for dinner on Monday she did ask me if that was dirt in the refrigerator. I had to admit, as I thought about it, that there was dirt in the refrigerator. I had taken some lantana seed and was trying some of that cold stratification. I moved the dirt to the garage yesterday. (Julia came home last night.)

Fungus gnats- Maybe because I am watering more these day, it seems that there are more fungus gnats. I type this blog upstairs in a room with many plants. There is an Night Blooming Cereus a few feet from the computer. I must say that there is nothing more satifying that being able to take a fungus gnat down by clapping my hands. Of course my success rate is limited. Perhaps that adds to the satisfaction when I get one.

I have started to put out those little yellow sticky things.

The world seems rather grim these days. We are at the one year anniversary of the start of the war in Ukraine. I wish I could say that the end is in sight. 

It does help to see the snowdrops, and aconite. 

There is a lot to do, both in the garden and in the world.

Be safe and pray for peace. 

Philip