June 18, 2023- it is almost lily time

The summer solstice is a few days away. This past Sunday we had a fire in the fireplace. 

It officially got to 64 degrees as the high last Sunday. That night it officially went down to 39.

Of course we have had the airconditioner on for most of the rest of the week. Friday was one of those hazy days with the air filled with Canadian smoke. For several days there was a bad air alert. Julia and I both wonder why our coughs persist.

The tree guy came and cut down the last of the derecho evidence in the back yard. (from 2020) A big piece of the sycamore tree had blown down and lodged itself in the crabapple trees. It was at the time, sort of attractive, as sycamore bark can be. That bark had lost its interest. He cut it down in a way that did not damage to the plants underneath. He's good at his work.

UPDATE

I woke this morning (Sunday) at about 4:30 to the sound of rain. We really need it.

It was a thin band of showers that did not last long.  As I add these last notes the sound of the frogs comes from the garden. They really only make their trilling after a rain (or a good soaking from the sprinkler.) It has been a while. In frog language it is saying "thank you." 

Last week in the voting you overwhelmingly liked the red poppy. 

Here were the vote totals

Here are your pictures this week , the best from this past week, which was from June 11-17.

#1 Pink Waterlily

#2 One last lupine

# PInk Shirley poppy

#4 White Shirley poppy

#5 Orange Asiatic lily

More pictures

More Shirleys

I have labeled them so you can comment about particular Shirleys.

#3

#4

#5

At the moment it is looking like we will have a good crop of lilies this year. That would be both the daylilies and the lilium. I say that quietly as several deer evenings could change that. So far so good.

This next wonderful clump of Asiatic lilies is so very large. I counted 19 stalks. Each has 7-9 buds. You can do the math. And unlike daylilies these flowers last a few days. In a week....

Actually in a week we will be in Colorado, looking a very different flowers. We are joing Katie and family for a week in Estes Park. I understand it has been raining a lot there. I have sometimes wondered

if there is only a certain amout of rain for the entire country. When some parts get little or no rain, some get a lot. I am appreciative of the fact that the west is getting rain now. We have sometimes been in Colorado when there was the danger of fire.

Here is one of the first coneflowers to bloom. There will be many more.

Julia's recipe

Strawberry Ice Cream

 At one time I had an ice cream churn. It made nice ice cream but you had to freeze the insert first and the machine's capacity was pretty small. So what with one thing and another, I stopped using it. I recently came across a receipe for strawberry ice cream that does not require a churn; you freeze it in a loaf pan for a few hours (or overnight) and then thaw it for a few minutes and use a scoop to scrape it out of the pan. It's good, as one would expect. It is not diet food, calling for both whipping cream and condensed milk. 

The ingredients:

2 pints strawberries (small and local are best, but any strawberry will work);

2 tablespoons white sugar;

2 teaspoons lemon zest;

1 teaspoon lemon juice;

1 vanilla bean OR 1 tablespoon vanilla paste;

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt;

1 can (14 oz.) sweetened condensed milk; and 

1 teaspoon vanilla extract. 

I used a vanilla bean, shown. I think vanilla paste would have worked just as well and vanilla paste is easier to use and readily available.

Here I am scraping the pulp/seeds out of a vanilla bean. I mixed the pulp with the lemon zest, sugar and 1/4 teaspoon of the salt. 

I cleaned the strawberries by washing them gently and cutting the tops off. My strawberries were small and from the farmer's market so mostly I left them whole. If you have bigger strawberries from the grocery store, cut them into quarters or even smaller pieces. I ended up with about 3 or 3-1/2 cups of strawberry pieces. 

I turned the oven on to 350 degrees. Be patient. This will make sense.

I poured the sugar mixture over the berries and mixed them together gently, along with the lemon juice.

I covered a rimmed sheet pan with parchment and poured the berry mixture onto the pan.

I baked the strawberries for about 25 minutes. I gently stirred and sort of mashed the berries after about 15 minutes. 

I let them cool on the baking sheet for about 15 minutes. 

When the straberries were cool, I dolloped them into the blender. The parchment paper held up but I was not taking any chances by picking it up. 

I added the condensed milk, the vanilla extract and the last 1/4 teaspoon of salt and zizzed it up until smooth.

Then I put the lid on the blender and put it into the refrigerator for about 30 minutes.

When the berry mixture was cold (and it was also very thick), I poured it into a big bowl. 

Although this is not a difficult recipe, it does take a fair number of cooking vessels. 

I put 2 cups of cold whipping cream in a big mixing bowl and whipped it. 

When the whipping cream was stiff, I began to dollop cupfuls into the strawberry mixture. After each dollop, I folded the cream in. I was not rigid about it. I am not averse to some streaks of whipped cream. Why would you be?

After all of the whipped cream was incorporated, I poured/scooped the mixture into a plain (no lubricating!) 9" x 5" bread pan. I put a double layer of  plastic wrap on top - making sure that the whole pan was securely covered. 

Then I put the ice cream into the freezer. The recipe said at least 3 hours. We left it in the freezer overnight. 

When it was frozen solid, we took it our of the freezer for 5 minutes and then used an ice cream scoop to scoop up a portion. It was good: no big strawberry pieces as sometimes turn up in commerical strawberry ice cream but that was okay with me. The ice cream can be covered up again with the plastic wrap. Ours remained fresh for several days. 

We think ripe peaches would work instead of strawberries. The peaches would need to be peeled. I think 3 to 

3-1/2 cups of peach pieces would be the equivalent of 2 pints of strawberries. 

Blueberries would make the resulting product blue-gray. Not so appetizing. Raspberries or blackberries would be seedy. Grapes? Kiwis? Unclear. I think strawberries and peaches are the ticket. 

Odds and Ends

Tadpoles- I mentioned a week or two ago that we had tadpoles in the pond. They seem to like waterlily pads. Here is a little video.

Deer Report- Minimal damage this past week. The ribbon barrier seems to have helped. However, this last week saw an addition to the neighborhood population. I went out to the garden about 6 yesterday.  (Saturday)  Behind the pond, in the grassy area next door (and there is no fence) was the tiniest fawn I can remember seeing. It was barely two feet tall. It stared at me without moving. I looked around and there was no parent. I clapped my hands and sent it moving away from the garden. 

About an hour later the regular sized deer we have been seeing around came walking down the street. It was looking around. While I do not suggest I understand deer facial expressions, I attributed the look to wondering where that little one had gone. 

I then related this sighting to a neighbor yesterday who lives across College Street. She told me they had actually witnessed the birth of a baby deer, by their back garage, earlier in the week. I suppose that was the fawn I saw. I expect it is back with its mother at this point. I just hope she does not teach her baby what lily buds taste like.

I sprayed my stinky deer repellant around last night.

The world still is scary. Work is still busy. The garden weeds get watered with flowers.

Someone told me that one day this last week was "national weed your garden day." Really- that is odd.

But we are getting away from Iowa City this coming weekend.

We will try to publish something from Colorado. We are actually going to be there for the next two Sundays. Our laptop however is not so easy to work. 

Pray for peace, and reconcillation.

Philip