September 29. 2024- the month is almost over

September is almost gone. It is still dry. It can be a struggle to stay positive. 

Remember all that rain we were going to get last weekend? It came last Saturday night. It was officially recorded as .03 of an inch. Is that more than a trace? There has been none since. There is none in the 10 day forecast. 

However much it was that was it for the month of September. 

Temperatures have been a little above normal. But it has been mostly decent sleeping weather.  Normal temperatures are coming. The lows are going down into the 40's. Some of the potted plants are wondering when they will get moved inside. 

The great plant migration should probably start soon. I need to get them prepared. Those plants that are susceptible to bugs should get a dose of systemic. Clivia are like that. 

So many plants.

It is also dark these days. And am not speaking of the dark that appears in the news. The time for garden is shrinking. Gardening time starts these days about 6:45. It is hard to find time after dinner.

Being positive

Let me start with this wonderful image.

Sometime in July a group of local painters came to the garden one Saturday morning and painted pictures. This one was done by a local artist named Beppie Weiss. She sent me the image this last week and  gave me permission to share it with you.

I have been repotting orchids. That makes the plants look much better. One enormous pink cattleya was just too big to take care of. So out of the pot she came. Out came the clippers. Away went the old potting mix.  She then went into ten much smaller pots.

Many orchids are setting spikes. 

That includes this catasetum. It is called After Dark. It sends out a spike in the fall which will eventually hang down the side of the pot.

Here is the current spike.

Here is the bloom from January, 2023.

The Montauk daisy is going to bloom. We got it in 2021. It is a plant that reminds us of the east coast where there a lot of them in people's yards in the late summer and fall.

It is a shrubby perennial. I do not have many shrubby perennials.

It does not entirely die back. But it has lived through 3 winters. 

It is valued as it blooms in the fall.

Here is more information about these dasies, from Martha Stewart.

https://www.marthastewart.com/8005377/grow-care-nippon-montauk-daisies

There are always garden gems if you look hard enough.

More pictures from the week

This is a small seed pod from the yellow orchid cactus.

This is a wonderful croton whose name I have yet to find.

These small white flowers will continue to forst.

The ordinary can become beautiful.

The red bougainvillea blooms in the fall.

Good old toad lilies.

Julia's recipe

Spicey Tamarind chicken 

This is a NYT stir-fry recipe. It interested me because it used a variety of vegetables and also tamarind paste, which I had on hand. Once the vegetable and chicken preparation was done, the recipe went pretty quickly. Served with rice, it was a nice new chicken dish.  

The ingredients:

about 1 lb. skinless, boneless chicken breast;

1/2 cup onion, in half-moons;

2 nice tomatoes, in wedges;

1 cup or so young green beans;

2 - 3 cups sliced bok choy;

1 tablespoon smushed garlic;

1 teaspoon grated ginger

1-1/2 tablespoons tamarind paste;

1 teaspoon sugar;

3 tablespoons vegetable oil;

1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes; and

some salt and pepper and fish sauce and chopped scallions.

As always, I started by preparing everything. I rinsed the bok choy, cut off the root end and sliced the leaves and stalks into thin strips.

I had purchased the green beans earlier in the day, and I had trimmed the ends off and rinsed them thoroughly (they can be sandy). The green beans were a succession (mid-summer) planting, so they were thin, without prominent seeds. That's what you're looking for in a green bean for this recipe.

I sliced the onion, smushed the garlic and grated the ginger. The onion is in the little white bowl, and the garlic and ginger are in

the little green and yellow bowl. I also cleaned and sliced up the scallions ending up with a bit more than 1/2 cup.

Then, as shown, I cut the tomatoes into wedges, after cutting out the cores.  

Lastly, I cut the chicken breast into small (3/4" to 1") pieces. I used the same cutting board because I was done preparing the vegetables. So no need to use a second cutting board.

I added 2 tablespoons of oil to a big skillet. When the oil was hot (shimmery - the stove was set to medium high), I added the chicken and sprinkled it with about 1 teaspoon of salt and about 1/2 teaspoon of black pepper. This may be a video of chiken sizzling in the skillet. It still will not work.

I cooked the chicken bits undisturbed for 3 minutes, flipped them over and cooked them for 3 minutes on the other side. It would be tedious to flip each piece of chicken individually. Do that if you like or feel free to use a big spatula to turn most of the pieces. After 6 minutes, I scooped the chicken bits out of the pan into a bowl.  

I added the other tablespoon of oil to the skillet followed by the onions. I turned the stove down a bit - more medium than high. Then a couple of minutes later (with frequent stirring) I added the garlic and ginger and stirred for only about a minute longer.

Note the brown coloration on the bottom of the pan. That's what fancy chefs call "fond," the essence of what was cooked early on. In this case the chicken. The fond will be incorporated in the dish as we move along. 

Next I added the tomatoes, the tamarind paste, the sugar, another teaspoon of salt and the red pepper flakes. 

Things became very dark indeed. Tamarind paste is very dark.

I cooked this mixture for 4 or 5 minutes, stirring frequently, and scraping up the bits on the bottom of the pan. As the tomatoes broke down, the bits came up. Mostly.

If you get worried about what is going on in the skillet, it is okay to add a couple of tablespoons of water.  

When the tomatoes were broken down, I added the green beans and the bok choy and cooked the vegetables for a couple (say 2-3) minutes, after which I added the chicken back to the skillet and cooked everything for another couple of minutes, to let the chicken heat up and get a little bit sauced. 

On the table. I added maybe a teaspoon or teaspoon and a half of fish sauce to the dish after it came off the stove. I sprinkled the scallions over all. 

We had the tamarind chicken over rice, with corn on the cob, green salad and bread pudding. Sort of an international meal. 

The leftovers (reheated with rice) were great.

Odds and Ends

Baseball is ending. Catlin Clark is done for the year. I am so glad she gets a long rest. It has been a very long year for her. Did I ever tell you she was a big supporter of the Coralville Food Bank? She was. She volunteered there at one point. She had an autograph session there when Christopher visited. He got to go see her in person.

I actually worked longer in the garden yesterday than I have in at least a month. I watered and fertilized many orchids.

I cleaned up the garden plot at Chadiks. Sundflowers are good but they are a pain when they are done if if they fall over. They also get rather large. 

The world is in sad shape, still. So much violence and so much pain.

We live in a bubble, insulated from much of that. 

The challenge is to find the balance. 

Balance. The answer to so many questions.

It is past post time.

Pray for peace.

Pray for friends to get healthy.

And maybe pray for a little rain. At least pray for rain in Iowa. Other places need to pray to recover from too much rain.

Until next week.

Philip