February 18, 2024- Week #13- still a little bit of winter

It is Friday evening, and the temperature is still falling. During the day it reached a cold 32 degrees. There had even been a dusting of snow on the ground to start the day. Then there was a stiff wind making you think about the really heavy coat again. It is now 15 degrees and in free fall. I really do not know how far it will go.

Update: 6am Saturday. It is 7 degrees, according to the little weather station in our bedroom. That was the only night in a month when it has been in single digits. (Fact check- it was -7 on January 22.

Update:6am Sunday- It is 23 degrees, and I believe the warm February has returned.

Spring returns today. We have had an early spring  for a month, giving us

February 14, 2024.

It was a Valentine's Day crocus. Even in 2012, the other warmest February I can find in my pictures, the first crocus was not until March 1. Of course as I think about it, I probably have a lot more crocuses planted today than 12 years ago.

We knew this cold period was coming. I came home early on Thursday, and potted up some aconite. I have about 3 dozen potted now. I have sold a dozen for the food banks.

 I am actually doing a controlled experiment with those little yellow light bulbs. I put two flats inside the back garage. I left one flat outside, next to the back garage. We will see how they compare. I suspect that there will be no difference.

Last year the first aconite was just appearing on February 26, 2023. The first crocus 

was March 1. 

More from this week.

Some spring bulbs spread over time. A single bulb with multiply and then you get a clump like this.

Garden tip-you can get a clump faster if you plant several of the little bulbs in the same hole.

This past week there even were white crocuses.

It is certainly a glorious time. It will of course return when the temperatures are back in the 50's in a few days.

Last week in the contest the easy winner was 

The black poppy.

The full vote was

It was a convincing win. I do like it when every picture does get good support.

This week will be Week 13

This will be the last week where you see a new set of pictures. Next week will bring the playoffs. But here are some nice pictures, for this last week.

#1 Trillium grandiflorum 

April 30, 2023

I love trillium. This one is the biggest. I have had this plant for probably 20 years. It is quite reliable always coming back in the same decent clump.

It is remarkable in that it changes color. It starts out white and fades to pink.

#2 Pink Dogwood 

May 3, 2023

The pink dogwood is quite remarkable in the nighborhood. It was a birthday present for Julia, about 30 years ago. We were told it might not do well in zone 5. For that reason we planted so the house would protect it a little from the winter north wind.

It now grows up to the second floor, which is out our bedroom windows.

Dogwood trees are understory trees. They like the dappled shade.

They are native to eastern North America.

The genus is Cornus. 

We have planted 3 other dogwoods in the backyard. They are white ones that bloom later in the season.

#3 The pansy face 

May 27, 2023

Pansies are so wonderful. They are real cold weather plants. You can plant them in October. They will survive a frost. They will also over winter, even if there is a winter. What keeps them from being a perennial is the heat. They die in the heat of the summer.

This past fall it was next to impossible to find them anywhere. Like so many plants I would like to find a place where I could get 5-6 flats. Then I could plant 25 and have many for the sale table.

#4 Another Red Poppy 

June 10, 2023

There have been a number of poppies in the contest this year. None had this kind of smooth color.

#5 Striped crocus

 May 27, 2023

Crocuses are so special. They add color to the early spring bulbs. This one was Christopher's faorite that time they lived with us during COVID.

Bonus pictures

In keeping with last weeks post, here are a few pictures that almost made the contest.

At some point in the Spring the aconite foliage almost makes a mat. Up through that comes the occasional late crocus.

Here are other trillium pictures

These little guys also fade from white to pink.

The story of the special Orchid

I belong to a local orchid club. I have belonged to that club for 25 years. I like the group because you do not have to be a fanatic to belong. 

Each year for your modest dues you get a free orchid. You get this plant if you attend the holiday dinner in early December. All the gift orchids are put on a table. Tickets are then drawn that determone the order in which people can pick out the orchid they want.

In December 2014, I picked this plant.

The name is Stenorrhynchos speciosus. I liked it in part because it really did not look like what most people think of as an orchid. One of its features was that it would usually bloom right after the first of the year.

A month later it was in full bloom.

It got bigger over the next 9 years, sometimes even blooming in the sunnmer. I did not divide it, but put it into bigger hanging pots.

It is listed as a terrestrial, native to Mexico and Central America. That means it grows in the ground, not attached to trees.

Here is is in 2019. The closeup shows you the individual flowers.

One of the activities of the local orchid club is to take members' plants to orchid shows around the upper midwest. I do not have many orchids for those shows. My orchid collection is only 20-25 plants. My orchids probably do not get the best attention as there are so many other plants. The orchids do all go outside for the summer, hanging from poles around the backyard.

Well last year, 2023, in the winter, I packed up this orchid and sent it to the shows. It came back loaded with ribbons. It scored well in whatever was the class they put it in. I figured it was in the odd-looking class.

Well 2024 rolled around. The plant had 13 stalks, compared to maybe 11 last year. I packed it up sending it north to St. Paul.

The plant went off to a show in St. Paul. Judging takes place first, at 8am on Saturday. 

I understand the idea of ribbons. I do not know that much about judging.

I had heard people at the club talk about plants being taken "back" for AOS judging. I had no idea what that was. I now have learned.

Apparently the judges first give out the regular ribbons. They then look at the plants that got first place ribbons and decide which are really special. That group goes to some other room or table for what is called AOS judging. (American Orchid Society.) I gather at this point plants or particular flowers are measured against some ideal plant or flower. You get a point score. If your score is over some total you really have done well., and get an award.

So on Saturday morning, in late January, the weekend of the St. Paul orchid show, the local club person who had taken the plant to the show, called me. Julia and I were out driving someplace. He told me the plant had been taken back for AOS judging. It had been awarded an AOS award,  something called a Certificate of Cultural Merit, or CCM. It apparently scored 83 on some scale. OK

But what he said next was the remarkable part. He told me I got to the right to name the plant.

What? And I had to pick a name in the next 30 minutes. Remember, we were out driving around.

So remembering that Maisie really liked the color red, I picked the name "Maisie."

(Sometime this summer we will name a daylily "Christopher.")

So let me introduce to you Stennorynchos speciosus "Maisie."

Here is the plant, back on our dining room table, with some of the hardware and ribbons.

Wow- what do you do next?

Here is a closeup with one of the stalks. The individual flowers do look like what you think of as an orchid.

Someone who was judging counted the little flowers. There were 195 open. 118 remained in bud.

Here was the label at the next show the following week, in Madison.

Right Now

This was before the freeze. I will report next week on how the clump fared as a result of the single digit temperatures.

The bud is opening.

Julia's recipe

Sugar Cookies

Sometimes a person want to make roll-out and cut-out cookies. I had it in mind to make heart-shaped cookies for Valentine's Day, and the best recipe for this purpose is sugar cookies. My go-to cookbook for basic recipes is Betty Crocker. My edition is from 1974, before an emphasis (in later editions) on boxed (cake mix) or canned (canned soup) items as ingredients. As I may have said along the way on ths blog, I cook as much as possible with ingredients my grandmother would recognize. That is the case here.   

The ingredients:

3/4 cup butter (1-1/2 sticks) - softened;

2 eggs;

1+ teaspoon vanilla;

1 cup sugar;

2-1/2 cups flour;

1 teaspoon baking powder; and

1 teaspoon salt.

The container on the left in the picture is cream cheese frosting. Whenever I bake a cake or something like pumpkin bars to be frosted, I do not worry about making the exact amount needed. There is no such thing as too much frosting. Extra cream cheese frosting freezes just fine and when later thawed, it spreads and tastes fine too. Also if you decide to frost your cookies, it would be nice to have some sprinkles on hand. We shop from time to time at an Amish country store called Stringtown Grocery. They sell, among other things, an amazing array of sprinkles, some figures (like snowflakes and candy canes and cows and pigs), some not (sparkly colored sugars and nonpareils).  

Two videos. The first is stage one of cookie preparation, creaming the butter and the sugar. I mixed the butter and sugar first, and then pretty quickly thereafter, added (and beat in) the eggs one at a time and then a slug of vanilla. I don't really measure vanilla. I probably used about 2 teaspoons instead of 1 teaspoon. I like to note the presence of vanilla. Another confession: I own fancy vanilla but I don't usually use it. The cooking show gurus (Milk Street, America's Test Kitchen) say they and their tasters can't tell the difference. Me neither. Non-genuine vanilla is much less expensive than the real thing. Use the money you save to buy fancy coffee. Or tea. Or seltzer.  

The secon video is mixing in the rest of the ingredients (flour, salt, leavening) until it turned into dough. 

After I had a big shaggy blob of dough in the mixing bowl, I turned it onto a piece of plastic wrap (or waxed paper or parchment), patted it into a round, wrapped it up and refrigerated the package for about 1 hour.

After an hour, I took it out and let it sit on the counter (still wrapped) for about 10 minutes. I turned the oven on to 400 degrees.

Next, I cut the dough ball in half, as it would not work to roll out the whole thing at once. 

I have a plastic rolling mat that my sister gave me. The circles show how big to roll out crust for pie shells of various sizes. I use it for cookies or yeast rolls because it is easier to clean up than the counter.

I dusted the mat with a little flour and started rolling out the cookie dough, rolling out from the middle in all directions and rotating the piece of dough after every few rolls. 

I needed to add a little flour now and again so that the dough would not stick to the mat. 

I used to use a canvas cloth to roll dough out on. But it was problematic. Either you washed it every time you used it, which was a mess or you didn't, which seemed unhygienic. 

This mat is a little unwieldy to get into the sink, but easy to wash and then air dry and then roll up and store until next time. 

As I said at the outset, I decided to make hearts. Seasonal. I have a lot of cookie cutters - bunnies, kitties, camels, snowmen, a spider, a ghost, a very large pig, circles of various sizes and much more. My heart cookie cutters come in sizes. I made some medium sized (as pictured) and some one size up. 

I baked them on regular air-bake cookie sheets. I have thin flexible re-usable baking sheet liners (the brown thing covering the cookie sheet). Not necessary, but I used them because I had them. 

No need to grease the cookie sheets. 

I baked the cookies two sheets at a time for about 15 minutes, rotating the cookie sheets front to back and top to bottom about halfway through. 

A lot of cookies on cooling racks. I let the cookies cool on the cookie sheets for a few minutes after which they could be easily removed with a spatula. 

This recipe makes a lot of cookies. Of course, how many depends on what size cookie cutter you use. I think I ended up with about 5 dozen cookies. 

I frosted the bigger cookies with some of the cream cheese frosting. Although the frosting was soft when spread, it did harden after a few hours, so the sprinkles would stay put and so the cookies could be shipped without worrying about stickiness.  

I ended up with 24 frosted and sprinkled cookies: pink pig sprinkles, brown, black and white cow sprinkles. purple sparkly sugar and multicolored little tiny shiny bits.  

Cookies! We sent some to a child of our acquaintance with a birthday. We also sent some plain ones to the family in Maine and ate a lot ourselves. 

So make sugar cookies sometime. They are satisfying in all ways. 

Odds and Ends

Garden yardsticks- Gardeners  enjoy comparing the current year with the past. But how do you measure whether a particular year is earlier or later than some other time?

One way is to take note of when certain plants bloom, perhaps for the first time. Here are a few measuring events. I think I have the order correct. The dates are for 2024

First Snowdrop- February 4 

First Aconite- February 8

First Crocus-February 14

First Dwarf Iris

First Bluebell

First Daffodil

Star magnolia blooms

Pink Dogwood blooms

Monsella tulips

White Tree Peony

You get the picture.

We got home from the grocery store Friday late afternoon and it was still light out. On January 1, 2024 we had 9 hours and 13 minutes of daylight. As of today, Febraury 18, we will have 10 hours and 44 minutes. Sunrise is at 6:57. Sunset is at 5:42. 

When the temperatures are above freezing, I can actually do some work in the garden, before and after work.

It is to get to 45 degrees today (Sunday). I need to put seedlings in the basement into bigger pots. I need to get the dirt for that operation in out of the back garage.

Pray for the world and this country. I can only begin to imgine the anxiety we will all feel, if that buffoon really makes it close. 

Philip