January 19, 2025- Week #8- The dark is almost here.

 

January 19, 2025. Mark it down on your calendar. The big dark is coming.

Today's high is suppose to get to 9 degrees. As I go to press it is 0 degrees. That cold comes after it was 52 degrees on Friday. What a roller coaster. One could not really enjoy the warm day, knowing what was coming. This is a methaphor for the next 4 years.

But the arugala sprouted in five days. When we left work after 5 this past week it was not dark. Officially sunset last night was 5:04. That is a 29 minute improvement since the darkest day.

Last Week in the contest

the winner is a rout was...the cactus.

Here was the final vote totals.

Will there be a finals in 2 months with the Cactus versus the Dogwood?

This week- is Week #8

#1   Lantana August 3, 2024

Such wonderful colors.

I love lantana. It is a plant that has been around for generations. It was the favorite plant of my Aunt Elsie, my father's sister, who lived in Chincoteague, Virginia. We used to plant it for her when we visited a long time ago.

It has its own genus, called...lantana. It is in the verbena family.

It is a perennial in warmer places, such as the church in Virginia next to my aunt's house. Several years ago I thought the 5 foot high lantana bush was just an aggressive variety of the usual annual. Then the term perennial came to mind. (The picture from Chincoteague is in the bonus section.) Chincoteague does get frosts. I now think these plants die back. I expect their leaves all drop. But the plant comes back in the spring, a grows to be a nice sized  bush.

It is not a perennial in Iowa. 

It is an expensive annual. I find greenhouses are increasingly pricey. What used to be sold in flats is now sold in 4-5 inch pots for $6.99 each. 

So I am growing my own. Not from seed. I have tried that. It did not work. I am still trying at the moment. None have germinated.

Instead I dug up a plant in the fall of 2023. I grew it under lights all winter.

It got through the winter and was a wonderful large plant all 2024. It is particularly nice in the fall. But it is not frost hardy. So I dug it up again. (pictures in the bonus section.)

I have taken cuttings from other plants, which sort of worked. 

I have perhaps a dozen little plants at this point, along with the big one.

But as you will read in the bonus section, the big one is trimmed way back.

The leaves are poisonous, but the seeds taste good to some birds.

Perhaps because the leaves are poisonous, it is considered to be deer resistant. Maybe it is even a deer repellant. Apparently they do not like the smell.

What else to say?
Hardy to zone 8?  (We might soon be zone 6) That makes me wonder about the Chincoteague, Virginia church plant.  Chincoteague is actually zone 8a. That is hardy to 10 degrees F. I read that in 2012 Chicoteague was in zone 7b.

#2 Tulip combination April 24, 2024

Our favorite tulip is Monsella, the one on the right. The splashy one on the left was what we bought thinking it was Monsella. The combination was rather good, always helped by the blue of the Virginia Bluebells.

Monsella however is a variety that is fading in commerce. We do not understand.  It is still in the catalogs. It often sells out quickly. Or as was the case in 2024, you order it early and then learn in the fall there is not enough to fill your order in the fall.

#3 Bartzella, the Itoh peony

This is Bartzella, an Itoh peony. 2024 was its 4th or 5th spring, depending on whether you count the year it arrived. Diane went to Minnesota and got one for both of us the spring of 2020.

An Itoh peony is named for the Japanese botanist. Toichi Itoh. It is a cross between the tree peony and the herbaceous peony. (Herbaceous peonies are the ones that die back to the ground each year.) Botanists had been trying to do this for decades. The idea was the creat a peony that would have the strength of stem of the tree peony but would die back every year.

It was first accomplished by Toichi Itoh, so these peonies bear his name. Here is an article about these beauties. Sadly Toichi Itoh suceeded in crossing the plants, but died before he could see them bloom.

https://www.sunnysidenursery.net/sunnyside-blogs/2024/5/13/explore-the-world-of-itoh-peonies

For other Itoh peonies see

https://shop.ilovepeonies.com/ITOH-PEONIES-Intersectional_c3.htm

Our Bartzella was a little slow in getting started. In 2024 I think it had 6-7 flowers.

If you get an Itoh from a nursery it will be expensive. 

I met a gardener from the area who found some on sale at Costco, maybe 2 years ago. He bought 4-5. Then the reduced the price again. He bought another 4-5. He now has something like 10 Bartzellas. Talk about over the top.

I do see them around the neighborhood. They do seem popular.

They are deer and rabbit resistant and do not have many diseases. 

What could be better.

They do like sun. 

I have one of the other Itohs on my acquire list.

Bartzella is of course yellow. That was the imperial color in China, where mostly peonies came from. Yellow was a color that was reserved for the royal group. It would have been hard to find yellow peonies before this past century.

#4 Hoya in profile October 17, 2024.

All the hoyas have to come inside for the cold time of the year. Many were in bud or flower when they came in. 

This picture is one of my favorite pictures from 2024. Part of that is the plain background. You do not get that outside. This picture had the plain wall behind it.

The clusters have not bloomed yet. 

Can this picture compete with colorful flowers? We shall see.

#5 Yellow hibiscus February 11, 2024

This wonderful yellow hibiscus bloomed indoors last February. I am currently rooting 3 new starts from this big plant that must have reached 5 feet tall. 

It likes full sun and will eventually set roots.

Bonus Section

More Bartzella pictures

More Lantana

This is the big plant in Chicoteague that must come back each year. The picture is from 2022.

This was the second year plant on Octoebr 5, 2024.

Here is the big plant right after I potted it. I potted it when I knew the frost was coming.

Unfortunately all the leaves died and I though the plant was dead. I cut it way back and still brought it inside. I stuck in under a table in the basement.

I looked at it last month. It was sprouting new growth. Here it is today.

I am looking forward to seeing how big it will get in its third year. I will have to plant it somewhere where it will have a chance to get really big.

Here is one of the cuttings. Cuttings will actually bloom sometimes even before they grow roots.

More Hoyas

Here are Monsellas from before 2024

There are just some colors that work together. Red and Yellow are two of those colors.

Right now

The Christmas tree is taken down. The crotons are back in their sunny place.

One of the clivias, brought inside from the garage, is starting a bud. Those round things on the right are the seed pods. It sometimes takes over a year for the seed to mature.

Julia's recipe

A different pizza

When I visited Katie recently, she made a pizza like this. The dough for the crust is very soft and moist, and so the crust was light and kind of fluffy. It made a pizza that was both soft and crisp, oddly enough. The toppings were simple, and the whole thing was delicious.  The only drawback is that the dough has to rise for a long time - 4 or 5 hours, with some shorter rest periods as well. So to have it for supper, you need to start it at noontime. Hands-on time is not so long. Most of the time is resting the dough.

The recipe came from the Milk Street magazine, and this was a source of irritation. I could not find the right issue of the magazine, so I went to the website but I could not view the recipe unless I paid a fee. No. So I found a similar recipe and that's what I used. Free of charge from me to you. 

The ingredients:

3 cups bread flour;

2 teaspoons sugar;

4-1/2 teaspoons of instant yeast;

2 cups water

3 tablespoons olive oil;

1 lb. cherry or other small tomatoes;

6 oz. whole milk mozzarella;

1 teaspoon dried oregano; and

2 teaspoons salt (plus a bit more at the end).

Not that many ingredients, but they matter. You need to use bread flour as it has more gluten. If you want to roll the dice and use all purpose flour, let me know how it turns out. Maybe bread flour is not crucial. I have instant yeast - seems to be what it for sale these days. If you have non-instant yeast, I think it will work fine. I would not use cake yeast (like my grandmother used). You want to use little raw tomatoes rather than sauce. You'll see why below. I say use only whole milk mozzarella, but I suppose you could use part skim. I don't ever use part skim anything. And don't skip the oregano.  

I started by measuring the  flour, sugar and yeast into the bowl on my stand mixer. 

I mixed the dry ingredients with the dough hook - worked fine. Then I added the water.

I mixed it for 5 minutes (on a kind of low to medium speed). 

Then I let the dough rest in the bowl for 10 minutes.

Then I added the salt and mixed for another 5 minutes - still on low to medium speed. 

Next I put 1 tablespoon of olive oil in a big bowl and spread the oil all around with my fingers. 

Then I plopped and scraped the dough out of the mixing bowl into the rising bowl. 

I spread a little more olive oil on top, then I covered the bowl with sticky plastic wrap. 

Not pictured: my complete inability to work with the first piece of plastic wrap. Ended up a big ball. Tip: don't cut the plastic wrap first. Stretch it across the bowl, sticking it to the far side. Then cut it. 

The dough rested for about 5 hours, during which time it rose and fell and rose again. Then I sprayed a half sheet pan (18" x 13") with non-stick spray and added the second tablespoon of olive oil. And I plopped the dough onto the pan. The video below is me getting the dough from bowl to pan. Then I let it rest for 20 minutes. 

I turned my attention to the tomatoes and cheese. 

update- sorry the videos are not working again

But first another video. In this one, I am ootching the dough around in the pan. The recipe said I did not need to get the dough all the way into all the corners which was good to hear because it wasn't going to happen.

I had more than 1 lb. of tomatoes - 2 12 oz. boxes. I really did not need more than a pound so we nibbled on the rest. Reasonably tasty tomatoes in January - a treat. 

I put all of the halved tomatoes in a big sieve...

and mushed them with a potato masher. The idea was to make the tomatoes drier. Less juicy. I ended up with maybe 1/3 cup of liquid in the bowl. 

This is why you don't use tomato sauce - it would weigh the crust down. 

What else could you use? Maybe pepperoni or a few sauteed mushrooms. You don't want to load this pizza

up. 

After the dough was done resting, I placed the tomatoes here and there. It was placement work rather than spatula work. Then I sprinkled the oregano around using my best sprinkle-from-on-high-for -maximum-coverage technique. Actually 1 teaspoon of dried oregano is more than you'd think.

I sprinkled a little salt too. Next time, I think I will sprinkle some salt on the tomatoes to facilitate the draining of liquid and to season them.  

Lastly the cheese. Grated and then sprinkled. 

Then the whole thing had to rest again. I turned the oven on to 500 degrees. The last rest period was 30 minutes, at which point the oven was hot. 

The pizza only baked for about 18 minutes. Maybe a little less. The proud but serious cook. 

The pizza needed to come off the sheet pan for about 5 minutes before serving, first onto a cooling rack and then onto a big cutting board. 

We served the pizza with some antipasto and salad. It lived up to expectations. Just about as good as the one Katie made.

Of course there were leftovers which were good  cold or reheated. 

Odds and Ends

As we approach the coming week I really am at a loss for thoughts.

It really is going to be a bad four years. No further duscussion is needed.

There is suppose to be a cease fire in Gaza. I suppose that is something. I doubt it will last. 

We will have to double our efforts to feed people. The people with their little hatchets are coming for food aid. 

Pray for survival.

Let us try to support each other. It is always good to hear from you.

Philip