October 29, 2023- it is now inside time

 The frost is coming.

All week we have know the frost was coming. It has not come yet. But...the predicted temperature does not even leave room for any question. By tonight it is suppose to be 24. Those lows will persist for 4 nights. I even saw a prediction for a 19 at one point. That is clearly toast time in the garden.

However, for a good portion of this past week the temperatures stayed between 60-80. 80? 

That meant the accelerated plant migration had decent weather. Scott came over on Thursday and brought in the 6-7 really heavy plants. That included the big old orchid cacti. It was so warm you did not even a coat. Some of those plants have to go to the second floor for the winter.

Of course that weather changed Friday afternoon. It was a day when the coat choice changed several times in a matter of hours.

One should not complain. Frost free until almost Halloween is fine. 

So now the migration is over, with the exception of some stragglers. Those will get hurriedly placed in the garage, with their more specific placement yet to come.

Garden pictures

Actually the garden still looks good.

This is one of the kale we planted the end of July.

The kale looks good. We will have to figure out what to do about cabbage worms, when you plant in the second part of the garden year. It seems like in the fall the cabbage worm network alerts their friends there are tasty morsels at the Mears garden.

Suggestions from the facebook garden group range from planting companion plants the moths do not like, to shade cloth (which seems a little severe) to BT, a chemical that would also impact other bugs. 

I do want to make more room for annuals, particularly along Fairview.

The white anemones persist to the end. This picture was taken Thursday, but the flowers were still around yesterday.

This lone coneflower brightened up the back driveway.

These are zahara zinnias. They really are good until the end. They stay short. And cheerful. Maybe I should pot some up to brighten up the inside for a few weeks. 

The taller zinnias have not done so well this year. Part of that was the deer. I also just did not plant enough.

Even as many plants continued to be green, others knew it was time to shut down, even before the frost.

The hosta in particular were shutting down.

Some of the leaves are wonderful. 

Remarkably there were some hosta that were every bit as green as they had been in July. 

Even after the frost there will be a number of plants that hold onto their green for a while. I think of pulmonaria, epimedium, and hellebores.

Preserving annuals

It is time for holding over certain garden annuals. I have many cuttings of persian shield. The first cuttings, from several weeks ago, are growing roots. We actually dug up a few plants Thursday to bring inside. I can report that once potted they did not even wilt. The fact it was overcast and a little rainy did not hurt. My goal with the persian shields is to have 20-30 plants by April.

I mentioned last week that at closing time in the garden you sometime need the encouragement to go on. 

Things to look forward to:

New Tree peony or two that will bloom

There are several tree peonies that might bloom for the first time this coming spring. These are pictures of the largest plant in the middle of the back yard. There are clues that it might be ready. First it is close to 12 inches tall at the point. Second the bottom 5-6 inches looks like a twigg. Finally it has formed a bud at the top. Tree poenies do that. 

It takes 4-5 years for a tree peony seedling to bloom. That seems like a long time. The plan is to have some new ones show up each year. After 3-4 years you have a crop at every stage in developement. Each year you would then have ones that would bloom for the first time.

Martagon Lilies

As I mentioned last week, I just planted about a dozen new martagon lilies. That just about doubled the number planted. I am so looking forward to spring and watching them develope. Mae West said something like "too much of a good thing is just about right."

The marties as they are knows,  bloom in early June this year. I hope they will get bigger and bigger. Of course sometimes the instructions explain they may not come up or bloom until the second year. 

Video of an ending garden.

Bulbs

With the migration ending I now need to turn my attention to bulbs. I planted the martagon lilies. But I have many more to plant. Aconite, anemone blandas, and alium. That is just the letter A.                          I did get some iris bucharica. I had some of those quite different iris in the past. I think I was down to only one plant this year. 

Of course it is not as easy as saying I need to plant bulbs. I need to have an idea of where they will go. Then after tonight I have to have the ground not be frozen. Fortunately the temperatures should rebound and be above freezing after maybe 4 nights.

Julia's recipe

Apple pie 

I thought I had posted a recipe for apple pie at some point in the past, but I find I have not. It is apple pie time of the year, and also we have some video of apple pie making while we were in Maine which is charming. So here you go. This recipe is largely Betty Crocker, reliable as to midwestern cooking. I use more apples than she calls for, and she likes two crust pies but I don't. Otherwise, she and I are on the same page.

The ingredients:

1 9" pie crust (Philip made one for me. There's also storebought);

about 7-1/2 cups peeled, cored and sliced apples of various kinds (more on this below);

3/4 cup of sugar;

1/3 cup of flour;

1/2 teaspoon grated nutmeg;

3/4 teaspoon cinnamon; and

1/4 teaspoon salt.

For the topping:

1 cup flour;

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter (not shown); and 

1/2 cup brown sugar. 

About apples: use several kinds if you can, to add some depth of flavor. Do not use Red Delicious which have no flavor and are mealy. Yuck. Do not use Granny Smith which take a very long time to soften in a pie. I also don't like Winesap or Rome, but I have less strong feelings about them than I do about RD and GS. Early in the season, Lodi, Greening and Yellow Transparent apples are tart and tender, making up nice soft and tart pies. On this occasion, I was using several different kinds from the farmer's market: Jonagold, Song of September, Zestar and (I think) Orleans Antique. Buffalo Ridge Orchard is a mainstay of the farmer's market so we get to try lots of different kinds of apples. 

I started by peeling (and then quartering and coring) all of the apples.

It turned out that 6 apples of various kinds and sizes did the trick. I had an apple on stand-by just in case, plus more in the refrigerator. 

A pile of apple quarters. 

I sliced the quarters in half (hence, eighths) and then sliced across to make small, thin (say 1/8" or so) apple bits. 

I put all of the apple slices in a big plastic measuring bowl. Very old. I recently realized it was part of a tupperware set we got as a wedding present. 

Next, I put the flour, sugar, cinnamon and salt into a bowl. I am grating a nutmeg, using a very old nutmeg grater.

I stirred the dry stuff together.

And added the apple slices to the flour-sugar-spice mixture. And used a big wooden spoon to turn the contents of the bowl over to mix the apples and the dry stuff gently.

I preheated the oven to 375 degrees.

And here we are on the apple pie baking day in Maine. Christopher and Maisie were doing the gentle mixing. Katie was standing by. Maisie was hampered in her mixing as she was trying to eat a chocolate chip cookie at the same time. 

After everything was mixed, I piled the apples into the pie crust. It looks like too many apples, but it's not. Apples shrink in the baking. You may need to do a bit of tucking apple bits into gaps in the filling. 

Here is a video of the process of transferring the apples from the bowl to the pie crust. Cooperatively, in alternate cupfuls (cupsful?).

Once the pie crust was full of apples, I turned my attention to the streusel topping. And here are the ingredients in the bowl - the same bowl the apples had been in. No need to dirty another bowl. 

I used a pastry cutter to cut the butter cubes into the flour and brown sugar. I worked it until the butter was in roughly pea-sized pieces. 

Then I used a 1/2 cup measure to sprinkle the topping over the pie. Slightly messy, but fine. 

Notice that the pie plate is in a rimmed baking sheet. Fruit pies tend to bubble over. Use of a rimmed baking sheet is really mandatory. 

Into the oven, where it baked for a long time. And I didn't use Granny Smith apples! 

I started checking after 1 hour. The apples were still resistant when poked with a bamboo skewer.

The pie ended up taking 1-1/2 hours to reach the correct degree of tenderness. Apple pies take the longest time. Peach pie or rhubarb pie or berry pies or pumpkin pie does not take as long.  

After the pie came out of the oven, it needed to cool on the counter to room temperature. If you want pie for supper, bake it in the morning or early afternoon. 

But note how nicely it holds its shape. We did have pie for several days, both plain and with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Tasty both ways. 

Odds and Ends

My sister sent me this story and picture. As you may know I have always been a fan of pumpkin art. These people carried it to the world record.

https://hyperallergic.com/852757/massive-halloween-themed-pumpkin-mosaic-sets-new-world-record/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=D102723&utm_content=D102723+CID_6617dfc5dc1253da11b793702a413125&utm_source=hn&utm_term=world+record+for+the+largest+mosaic+made+of+gourds

A friendly vendor at the farmer's market gave us 15-20 smaller pumpkins yesterday. I will store them someplace until maybe Thanksgiving. Then we will carve them and hang them in the trees.

If you find something odd, let me know about it.

Leaves- They are finally coming down. I will need to at least rake any bed that will have bulbs added.

I often close on the somber note, thinking about the world, the country, or just Iowa. So much violence. So much killing. So much disfunction. The events in Lewiston, Maine were only 35 miles from Portland. That is where Katie and family live. I understand they closed the school in Portland, with the shooter on the loose. Think about how one would explain that to first graders. It would be a crash course in reality.

Then there is the clown show put on by the House Republicans. It would be amusing if the consequences were not so serious. 

And there is Iowa. It is not Florida or Texas, but it is going in that direction. 

I must stop.

Pray for peace and more sensible government. I read how some people disparage prayer. They say that prayer does not do anything. Well, if prayer is all you do, I understand the criticism. Prayer has to lead to you to do something. It has to lead you to do something. Maybe the biggest prayer should be for strength.

You may not be able to personally stop climate change. But you can and must do the little things. You can then be part of something bigger, that might do something, eventually.

Martin Luther King, Jr. reminded us that "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." 

Change takes a long time, but it does happen.

Work for change, and find your balance.

Until next week. 

February 26, 2023

Philip