December 1, 2024- let the contest begin

Welcome to December, 2024,  and the Mears Garden Blog Winter Picture Contest. 

It is finally cold here in Iowa. Thanksgiving is over. It is time to spend some time thinking about the past garden year. 

It was a remarkable year, with a very short winter in 2023-24.  That meant it was a long garden year. It certainly had its ups and downs. We had a very early spring. 

This picture was taken on January 5, 2024

This was taken on February 4, 2024.

A big snow in early January insulated the ground, which really did not freeze all winter.

But let me move on to the contest.

The winter picture contest

Our little way of getting through the winter

The first contest was in 2005. There has been contests each winter ever since, skipping one year. The reason why I missed that one year eludes me at this point, which is fine.

For 13 weeks there will be a contest between 5 pictures from the garden in 2024. You get to vote, using a poll located on the website. The 13 winners and several wildcards advance to the next round. After a final vote, the picture of the year will be selected. By that point, hopefully, spring will either be here, or will be right around the corner.

The pictures are posted early on Sunday morning, with voting available all week. Everyone in the household can vote. I think if you refresh the post that allows another vote to be cast.

Technology hint - How to vote on your phone.  If you are viewing the blog on your phone, you must scroll to the bottom and click on "view web version." That will get you to the poll.

Comments are encouraged and much appreciated.  Upon request I also send out an email when the new post is available. If you do not already get these reminders, send me an email if you would like this notice.  My address is philip.mears@gmail.com

 Some people like to comment by using the reply to the email. Others use the comments section at the end of the post. I always am interested in why you picked a particular picture. Comments can be about any subject however, including how your garden is doing or what you think of Julia's recipe.

Other features of the blog, during the contest include:

        There of course are the contestants, and the announcement of the voting  from the previous week. If you are interested you can check during the week to see how the contest is going.

        You vote in the poll section. If it is working correctly, you can see each week's vote totals going back to the beginning of the contest. Voting ends at the end of the day on Saturday. There are always a few people who wait to vote to the very end. This can add some suspense if the vote is close.

        There is a "bonus" section.   This contains other pictures related to the contestants. Sometimes for example I will show you the same picture, only with different cropping. 

        There can be a section called "right now." This contains pictures from the garden taken this week. Mostly those will be inside pictures.

        There is also Julia's recipe.  Katie made us a separate blog for all of her past recipes. It is located at 

https://mearskitchen.wordpress.com/

        Finally there is a section called "Odds and Ends." It contains things I have found odd. It is also located at the End of the blog. 

So let us do it. For 2024-25. 

The first week's contestants.

week #1

#1 Violet- Birth of a Galaxy (January 1, 2024)

Gardens evolve over time. There should be new additions all the time. New plants hold the interest and keeps things fresh. This is true about many things, other than gardens.

African violets were added to the our garden about 2 years ago. We would get them at the Iowa City Winter's Farmer's Market. The vendor is Jean. She sells already wicked (not bad, but with wicks) violets in bud for $5/ each.

What is wicking? You dangle a piece of string or yarn through the bottom of the pot. You place the pot on a glass with the string in the water. The water wicks up the string providing just the right amount of water to the violets. I was not sure about this. Two years later I am an advicate. 

I should point out that since we live in Iowa, gardening is an inside venture for almost half the year. I start bringing inside the tropicals in October. They will stay inside until May. 

Actually the African violets stay inside all year round. They just have a lot more room when all the other plants have gone outside for the warm part of the year.

#2 Ornamental Kale (March 15, 2024)

Ornamental kale was amazing in the early garden year. It was planted in the summer of 2023, and just kept going. It was doing well in December, 2023. There was a big snow in early January. When it thawed the kale were fine. They remained really interesting in January through March, .....outside.

We tried kale again in 2024. We started about 150 plants in early July. However they were removed from the greenhouse too early. It was not the heat. It was the cabbage worms. I really like kale. They sold well in the plant sale in 2023. It really is an up and coming plant for the very late garden.

This coming summer me and those worms are going to have to come to an understanding.

The kale in this picture looks like it has gone through a lot. But sometimes I find those plants/flowers make the best pictures.

#3 Blue hyacinth (March 30, 2024)

Blue is always good in a flower. There is much blue in the springtime. There are bluebells and blue scilla.

Hyacinths can be blue, and are sometimes overlooked in the garden.

They do come back reliably. We buy them in the winter for forcing inside. They really are nicely fragrant.

We then keep the old bulbs until we can plant them outside. They will bloom the following spring.

The name comes from Greek mythology. Hyacinth was killed by Zaphyrus, the god of the west wind. Z was jealous of H's love for Apollo, who then transformed the drops of blood into flowers.

Sounds like an opera.

The flowers are suppose to have been mentioned by Homer, and I do not mean Simpson.

They, like so many wonderful spring bulbs, are from Turkey down to Palestine.

They are related to scilla, sometimes known as squill.

These bulbs are not to be confused with English hyacinths, which will appear later in the contest. 

#4  Daffodil Ice Follies (April 10, 2024)

What a cheerful flower. So yellow in the sunlight.

This Daffodil is probably named Ice Follies. I never was as compulsive about keeping track of names of Daffodils. I do keep the orders. I have many garden labels for my perennials. Not so much for bulbs. I am not keen on having a label for a piece of bare ground. 

On a cold January I can engage in a great game of matching the pictures to the name from the order. 

There is really only one thing you need to know about daffodils.

Deer do not like them. 

Actually there is a second thing to know. There is a correct side the goes up. This distinguishes them from certain smaller bulbs where you can just drop them in a hole and not worry about which way is up.

What else to know?

They come back every year.

They like sun. Fortunately in April and May the leaves are not out on many of our trees.

You should not cut their foliage back until July. Sometimes this is harder than you might think. The foliage does get a little ragged by then.

Here is something I did not know until I read it on the internet. That must make it true.

Daffodils have roots that are called contractile. That means they pull the bulb deeper into the ground. That makes sense if you think about it setting seed. The seed falls to the ground. Somehow it wiggles its way done to bulb depth.

#5 Adenium Little Panda (September 24, 2024)

One of my current enthusiasms is for the plant adenium. It is sometimes known as the Desert Rose. I had 3 for a while. They lived but did not bloom. This year this one bloomed for months. It even kept blooming after I brought it inside. This variety, called Little Panda, I got from Logees, a wonderful greenhouse in Connecticut. It is a source for me for  Hoyas as well as other plants you would grow in a greenhouse. We visited there once about 15 years ago.

Adenium like to go outside, when the night temperatures stay above 40. They like full sun, and like to get watered every few days.

They may drop their leaves when they come inside. Note - all four of mine at the moment look good and still have their leaves.

I see on the youtube that when they go dormant they just do not need water.

Here is that video if you are interested. I apologize for the ads.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPVGJSuACAw

By the way, that swollen trunk is called a "caudex." We try to be educational.

Bonus Section

April 5, 2024

January 4, 2024

February 10, 2024

November 3, 2023

I look at these pictures and wonder why I do not grow more of them. I should just buy 50 new hyacinths and plant them all over. Then I remember how crowded the garden is already.

I certainly do have a wish list. right beside that is a "more list." I guess that is just a part of gardening.

Right Now

I am still moving plants around. It got down to 11 degress Friday night. I decided that the  unheated outside garage was too cold for some plants that had been parked there. They went there when there was a freeze finally two weeks ago. So they came inside. That included the boxes of amaryllis bulbs and the last of the orchid cactus.

Here are some pictures.

This is my one little hardy cyclamen. I have tried them over the years without ,uch success. This is apparenly in a location it likes. Now will it bloom? I will look at it again when it warms.

This is one of the hellebores. They send up their bew growth in late fall. One year we even had a blooming hellebore for Thanksgiving.

This year the first frost was very late. Sometimes in the late fall I would see an occasional spring bulb poking up. Not this year. 

My theory is that those plants react to a very cold spell followed by a patch of warm weather. They are fooled into thinking it is spring. This year we did not have that cold spell in October. The cold just arrived. 

This is the now full plant stand at work. It is now full. I think about the evolution of my plant migration over the years. I realie that I have many more sansevieria plants than ever. There are over 20 just at the office. I will write about them at one point. They are mostly foliage plants, not known for their flowers. 

The green in the newly blooming cattleya from last week faded to white. It is the same as the other one that is blooming. I think the name is Arctic Snow.

Here you have the blooming jade plant. It set buds a month ago. The bud opened this week. More to follow.

This bougainvillea is starting to bloom. It is in a south facing window.

Julia's recipe

Apple Custart Pie

We have a traditional Thanksgiving menu - turkey and gravy, dressing (on the side, not in the bird), sweet potatoes with lemon yogurt, no-knead light rolls, roasted brussels sprouts, 2 kinds of cranberry sauce, salad and pie. This year, our vegetarian niece Mary joined us with her friend Matteo, and so we made the dressing with vegetable stock and also lentil and spinach stew. All good. 

We do tweak the menu from time to time. I added romanesco broccoli and delicata squash to the sprouts for roasting this year. It was good, and at some point, I will post it. And I changed up the apple pie. I am not a fan of two-crust pies, so for some years, I made apple tart or apple pie with streusel.   

This year, I took a look at the apple cookbook our friend Pat gave me, and I found a recipe for apple pie with a custard topping. Kind of like rhubarb custard pie. But with apples. 

The ingredients:

1 9" single crust pie crust (Philip made me one, off camera);

3 to 3-1/2 cups thinly sliced apple pieces;

6 tablespoons of butter - divided;

1 cup white sugar - divided;

1 tablespoon or so of vanilla;

2 tablespoons white flour;

1/4 teaspoon (or so) freshly grated nutmeg;

3 eggs and 

1 cup heavy (whipping) cream.

The recipe called for Granny Smith or Honeycrisp apples. I did not have Granny Smiths. I think I had one apple from the Honeycrisp family (maybe Cosmic Crisp). The yellow apple is called Opal, and I am not sure about the smaller red apple. Probably something with an interesting name from the end of the farmer's market. Use tart-ish apples, as in the Honeycrisp family or Jonathans or McIntosh or the suggested Granny Smiths. I think Yellow Delicious would be too sweet. Red Delicious are flavorless and mealy. If your apples are not tart or tart-ish (like Gala or Pink Lady or Cameo), add a tablespoon or so of lemon juice. I'll let you know when. 

Philip made me a pie crust.

I peeled the apples (in fact I got started before realizing I wanted P. to take pictures - hence the partially peeled apple in the first picture). I used a melon baller to remove the cores. 

Then I cut out the blossom and stem ends and sliced the apples into thin (say 1/8") slices. I put the cored half apples on the cutting board and just sliced through each half. Yes, the slices were not all the same size. It doesn't matter. 

Meanwhile, Philip finished the pie crust, and I turned the oven on to 350 degrees. I put a piece of aluminum foil in the pie plate on top of the crust, and I filled the pie plate with dry beans. 

I have a little container with a piece of aluminum foil and beans for just this purpose. Pie beans can be reused a lot of times. 

I baked the crust with the beans for 10 minutes, then removed the pie beans (and foil), pricked the bottom of the crust with a fork and put the crust back in the oven for another 5 minutes. When it was done, I set it aside. 

Next, I melted 2 tablespoons of the butter in a big skillet. I added 1/4 cup of the sugar. 

Actually, first I melted 4 tablespoons of butter and poured it into a bowl for use in the custard. I did not want to use two pans.

I followed the sugar with the apples. If you are using lemon juice, add it with the apples. 

I cooked the apples on medium heat for 6 or 7 minutes, until they were tender. No need to hover. I stirred the apples around 2 or 3 times while they were cooking.  

While the apples were cooking, I turned my attention to the topping.  

I had already melted the butter and it was in a little bowl. 

I added the rest of the sugar and the flour and the nutmeg and the vanilla. It made a thick paste when I whisked it. Then I added the eggs and the cream and whisked some more. 

The picture shows grating nutmeg. I have an old grater, as shown. A microplane would be fine too. 

Whisking. 

I spooned the apple-cooking liquid into a little dish and then poured the apple slices into the pie plate. 

I tinkered with the apple slices so they were more or less evenly distributed.  

Then I poured the custard over the top. I had a little more custard and apple juice than I needed. 

Next time, I will use a deeper pie plate. Or, I suppose, fewer apples. 

The pie went into the 350 degree oven for about 45 minutes. No need to worry about whether the apples were done - they were pre-cooked. The pie was done with the custard was set. No wiggling or sloshing of the custard.

I put the last of the custard and the apple juice into a ramekin to bake and it was delicious. 

The pie on the table. A bit monochromatic, but that is the way with custard-topped pies. We served it at room temperature. One could add a dollop of whipped cream or a scoop of ice cream. Or be ascetic and eat it plain. 

Leftovers were just fine. 

Odds and Ends

Here I am at the end. The contest is launched. It is now been close to year 20 for the contest. There have been over a thousand pictures in the contest over the years.  So many big numbers. So many great pictures and memories.

I should mention the plant sale. That has also just ended,

During COVID I started selling plants, with 100% of the proceeds going to the local food banks. We have just finished the fifth year. We raised a little over $7000 this year, adding up to over $30,000 over the five years.

It has been fun, and worth while. What else can you ask. I have met some wonderful people. What is gardening if it is not the connections you make with people?

Sometimes I get tired. This year there were occasions when my limited time went first to the sale, rather than tending the garden.

I guess it really is all about finding the balance. (Julia and I still work full time as lawyers.)

Parden me. I really try to avoid getting deep.

Sometimes I do that here at the end.

We live in a challenging world. Getting through the next four years will... (fill in the blank)...

Pray for peace. Pray for strength.

But enjoy the pictures and let's have a good contest.

Philip