April 21, 2024- something new every day

Julia flew away to Maine for a week yesterday. Right before she left the washing machine stopped working, for a while. Earlier in the week the computer was very slow. I had trouble moving pictures around. The diagnosis there was that it was 10 years old. Yesterday afternoon I went to write this post. I got a message that "something was wrong with posting your data."Great. What next?

So it obviously finally started working. I tried several things inluding  restarting the computer many time. That is the technological way of hitting it with a hammer.

Yesterday, without the structure of another person in the house, I engaged is disjointed behavior all day.  I snacked from the refrigerator all day. I gingerly did half loads of laundry. Maybe next week I will tell you the story of blue jello.

I puttered in the garden, off and on. Part of that was the temperature. Maybe it got all the way up to the mid 40's. The hat of choice for gardening was the stocking hat.

We have all 100 caladium bulbs potted and placed on a shelves inside. They need soil temperatures of at least 65 degrees to germinate. 

We have over a hundred Shirley poppies in little pots. About half of them moved into bigger pots this week. These were started inside on February 1. In previous years I have started than January 1. However when I did that, they were blooming in their pots in early April, which was less than ideal.

The garden is bursting with energy. A warmer sunny day today will be wonderful. We had two good rains this week. We are still ahead of normal on rain for the year. 

Voting for daffodils

The daffodils are fading, except for a few late ones. And there was voting last week.

By a nose the daffodil with the orange ruffle got the most votes.

Here was the vote total

I always appreciate when the votes are spread out that way.

 Coming soon

It seems like there are lots of plants that are preparing for their display. The list of things to come includes

Tree peonies, including one new plant.

Martagon lilies- there are many more this year. I even have labels for them.

Camassia- do you know this plant? It was grown as a food source

Cyprepedium orchids- the backyard clump is bigger than ever. The front yard now has a clump of two.

Lupines- There are so many of them. I just hope there is not a big storm right after the flower stalks have gotten tall. That can knock down the display.

English bluebells- the buds are coming

                                        Right Now

There are wonderful things happening.

Both the white crabs and the one remaining pink crab bloomed nicely this week. As did the pink dogwood. That dogwood now reaches almost to the top of the window in our bedroom, on the second floor.

The pink rhododendron in the front is in fall bloom.

Mostly it is bluebell season. They are everywhere. They are particularly great late in the evening or first thing in the morning. They go so well with everything.

The lupines are all over the place. I actually thought to myself could lupines be regarded as invasive?

Look at these videos.

As I mentioned there were still a few good daffodils.

Other pictures

This is one of the few monsella tulips we have left at this point.

I have written down in several places that we need to order them early, before they sell out.

The little dwarf iris have begun to bloom.

The bluebells dance nicely with several epimedium.

This is Martian.

This is the little dwarf iris named Boink.

It has to be on the list of best named plants.

Last year's ornamental kale is going to seed.

This is one of my martagon lilies. I think the name is Orange Marmalade. It is the only one that has the dark stem. I so look forward to the martagon lilies blooming.

Cypress spurge is such a nice companion to the lupines. They are like tiny fireworks.

This is a variagated lily of the valley. It does not spread like the regular variety.

Julia's recipe

Rice with mushrooms and ginger 

Another NYT recipe - this one for a one-pot rice dish. It's pretty fast, It can be a vegan main dish or a side dish with a protein main dish. I like rice and I like mushrooms and I like one-pot, so I was on board. 

The ingredients:

1-1/2 cups medium grain rice;

2+ cups vegetable broth (I used better than bouillon);

2+ cups cremini mushrooms (or whatever mushrooms you like);

2 teaspoons cornstarch;

3 tablespoons soy sauce;

2 teaspoons Shaoxing wine or if you don't have it, 1 teaspoon rice vinegar;

1 tablespoon regular sesame oil;

1" fat piece of ginger, peeled and sliced;

2 thinly sliced scallions; and

salt and pepper. 

I did not use that whole piece of ginger. I broke a fat piece off and peeled and sliced it.

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The first thing I was supposed to do is rinse the rice three times. Okay. I put the rice in a big sieve with a handle, put the sieve in a pot and added water.  I let it sit for no more than a minute and drained it by lifting the sieve out of the pot and pouring out the water. Then I did it again and again. 

Why? The only thing I can think is that rinsing it made it less sticky. So the grains would be separate.

I put the tea kettle on. I was going to need vegetable broth. Often, I stir the bouillon paste into the stuff in the pot and add the water later. As we will see below, that wasn't going to work. 

When the water boiled, I mixed about 2 teaspoons of the bouillon paste into the boiling wate and stirred a bit so it would dissolve.  

When the rice was rinsed and the bouillon was melted, I poured the rice into a dutch oven and added the stock. I let that sit for 10 minutes.

While the rice and stock were sitting around, I prepared the mushrooms. I bought small-medium cremini so they would only need to be cut in half. 

I washed and halved the mushrooms and put them in a bowl. I added the cornstarch and tossed that around.

Then I added the soy sauce and the rice vinegar (I did not have Chinese wine) and the sesame oil. Finally, I added a bit of salt and pepper and tossed some more. 

At that point, it was time to cook the rice. I brought it to a boil and added the ginger slices. I turned it down, covered the pot and cooked it at a simmer for 5 minutes. 

After 5 minutes, I added the mushrooms and used a big spoon to gently mix the mushrroms throughout the mixture. 

I put the cover back on and cooked the mixture for another 10 or 12 or maybe 15 minutes. A few minutes in, I checked the mxture. It seemed dried so I added some more water in 1/4 cup increments. I think I ended up using an extra 1/2 cup. 

While the rice and mushrooms were cooking, I cleaned and sliced the scallions.

In the attractive serving piece, with scallions scattered over the top. 

We ate this as a side with baked chicken pieces. I had 2 chicken breast halves, each of which I cut in half. At the beginning of the cooking process, I turned the oven on to 375 degrees, cut the chicken breasts in half, sprinkled them with a spice mix and put them in the oven. They were done with the rice was done. And I was cooked some asparagus because this time of year, I am crazy about asparagus. And it isn't even asparagus season here yet!

Leftovers were good, hot or cold. 

Odds and Ends

    The plant sale for the food banks is picking up steam. We have reached $1400, with plants just now starting to come in from other people. I have potted up some nice big hosta. Someone brought some nice brunnera, in flower. I then noticed that the ones in our garden were blooming.

    I am struck by the thought that the garden has many plants at the moment that are finished. Daffodils have joined the scilla and snowdrops and aconite. But the daffodils look finished. You actually should go around and deadhead them. Spent iris flowers should also be removed.

And the weeds. They really are a lot of them. I try to dig up 25 dandelions every day. There was that magic moment in the garden in March when the early spring bulbs were on display, and the weeds were still asleep.

I potted up a second year tree peony yesterday. We will see how that goes.

Governor Reynolds announced this week a $900,000 program to feed kids for the summer. This, of course, was after she turned down a program that would have meant $29,000,000 in food aid to kids.

You wonder if she did not think people would remember the earlier amount she turned down.

The Iowa legislature will go home soon, for the year. 

Congress  finally passed money for the Ukrane. If that former president is elected there will be no more money. I really believe he will do whatever Putin wants. 

I just have to wonder if people really will vote for him. I keep thinking that one day people will notice the emperor has no clothes on. But probably not in Iowa.

War continues. Hunger persists in the same world with billonaires. Then there is the climate.

There is so much to do.  

I wonder if the frost last night harmed some plants. At some point I will have to open the door and look to see.

Be safe.

Be kind.

Find the small things you can do to make it a better place.

Philip